"Freezing" means that all of a sudden you can't move your mouse cursor, close a program or window, or do anything at all. Everything on the screen is frozen in its current condition.

Here are the some steps to take:

1. Press and hold down Alt, then Ctrl, then Delete keys. When you have them all held down at once, release them.
2. If you have Windows NT, click Task Manager.
3. Often one program is highlighted and listed as Not Responding. If not, select the program that was active when the screen froze.
4. Click End Task in the dialog box.
5. If another dialog box appears, click End Task again.
6. If this solves the problem, you're done. Save any work in other open applications.
7. If this doesn't solve the problem, repeat the process, closing down programs one by one.

If the above process doesn't work, press Ctrl, Alt, Del as described above and then repeat the process. This reboots or restarts the computer. (This is sometimes called a warm boot.) Windows may start Disk Scan when it restarts; let is go through the process.

If you can't do a warm boot, try a "cold boot", which simply means turning the computer off for a minute and then turning it back on.

In all cases, try to remember what you were doing when the screen froze. See if the same thing happens when you do the same thing again. This will help you troubleshoot the cause of the problem.