You might have encounter Windows completely freezing not letting you even open the start menu to restart. Doing a hard reset isn’t good for your PC components especially the hard drive. Here’s how you could restart your PC without having to do severe damage to your PC.
You can bring up Task Manager using the following keys:
- Hit Ctrl+Alt+Del and click on Task Manager
- Hit Ctrl+Shift+Esc to bring up Task Manager

Once the Task Manager pops up, you could either restart or shutdown a hung process from the process list, or you could click on Shutdown> Restart to restart the computer.
Pretty simple, but your PC is safer next time it hangs up. This trick works in both Windows XP and Vista.
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December 20th, 2007 at 12:35 am
Hey, I never knew we could also bring up Task Manager by pressing Ctrl+Shift+Esc!
December 22nd, 2007 at 9:28 pm
This shortcut works for Windows Vista Also…
December 24th, 2007 at 1:32 pm
Thanks for the new trick. Didn’t know that!
December 24th, 2007 at 1:50 pm
I find pressing power off a better and quickest solution , though it preforms a proper shutdown and you have then to start it again.
December 24th, 2007 at 5:52 pm
Depends on the situation, if nothing works power off is a last option.