Does you PC freeze from time to time and you don’t know what to do?

The following is a quick checklist to narrow down the possible reasons and solve the problem.

Possible reasons:

1. OVERHEATING: check the CPU temperature from the BIOS and compare it to the manufacturer's recommendations. If it's higher, you have a problem.

2. INSUFFICIENT RAM: if you have less than 4 GB RAM and use a modern OS (Windows 7, 8.1) you need more RAM.3. BROWSER ISSUES: try using a different browser and check whether you notice a difference.4. MALWARE: check for malware. Sometimes malware can be a RAM hog and dramatically clog up your PC.

5. OUTDATED SYSTEM: Start Windows Update and apply all available patches and updates. Sometimes this can solve your problem.6. INSUFFICIENT DISK SPACE: Windows needs at least 15% of available disk space for system maintenance, otherwise it acts up. Check your disk usage and clean up all junk files you can.

7. TOO MANY AUTOSTARTING PROGRAMS: this is related to RAM issues. If you have too many programs running automatically, they end eating up most of your RAM and you may run out of it with consequent freezes and crashes. Check on this by using System Configuration (Start/Search/msconfig. Once you open it, select the "Startup" tab to view your autostarting entries and deselect all not necessary or suspicious entries. Google any entry you're not sure about before deselecting it because you could kill a legit process necessary for Windows to work correctly).