Go Home | Go Back to Tips Page There are times when you Mac freezes: the cursor on the screen no longer follows your move. The machine seems to be dead. Now, your only hope is your keyboard: maybe you can strike some magic keys to revive your computer, or at least reset your computer without pull out the power cord. The first thing you should try is to press the hotkey command + period, this hotkey is to cancel the current action the computing is doing. Maybe your Mac is doing some time-consuming job that cannot respond quickly. This hotkey may cancel the job, and give you the control again. If this fails, you can try command + option + esc. This keyboard combination tries to quit the current application forcefully. If you are lucky, after quit the malfunctioning application, you can get out of the freeze. If you succeed, switch to your other applications and save your documents, then restart your computer. If you fails, try the power off key. It is the big key on top of the keyboard, with a big triangle on it. If you are lucky, you will get a dialog box let your restart or shutdown your machine gracefully. You can choose restart to bring the macine back to normal. If you are not so lucky, you should try command + control + power-off key. This will force the Mac to restart. Note your unsaved documents will be lost. If this fails, try command + option + shift + power off key. If all these actions fail, you have no choice but to press the power button or reset button. That is your last choice. You will lose all your unsaved documents. Anyway, I hope you are lucky, never need to use these tips. Good luck. |