Comments for "(Not Responding)" - What does it mean, and what do I do about it?

Comment from Michael on 2008-11-25

2008-11-25T09:16:53Z

Jacqui Faulkner posted here at June 29, 2008 9:51 AM and mentioned her own solution to 'Not Responding' messages.
I sure can relate to the frustration these messages and the delays in processing Windows commands can cause.
I run McAfee Security and McAfee SiteAdvisor is an automatic installation component which sits on the bottom of your screen above the Task Bar.
So, I have discovered that by clicking the little arrow next to the McAfee SiteAdvisor icon a drop down menu appears and there is the Disable McAfee SiteAdvisor option.
I have done that and will report back here in one week and let you know the outcome.
PS I will surely know if this makes a difference as I would average 10 or more 'Not Responding' messages per day.

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Comment from bob on 2008-11-01

2008-11-01T16:33:16Z

Ok, i have been trying to download call of duty world at war beta, and when its done downloading, i choose run, and it starts to install, but then i get the not responding thing! It happens with almost anything i download of the internet. please help?

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Comment from Oscar Germino on 2008-10-15

2008-10-16T00:49:12Z

I try to log my facebook on my profile it says "not responding" it was annoying me.

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Comment from Sandra Crofton on 2008-09-06

2008-09-06T11:54:32Z

I have a chronic and severe case of DO NOT RESPONDing. It seems to have grown when I unwittingly acquired COMPUSERVE, which I did not elect to have, but that seemingly has pirated my system. This happened when I subscribed to Norton Antivirus and was required to remove all antivirus programs so they could download the Norton. I was told that the download would take about 45 minutes, the sytem would turn off, and when I restarted it I would have Norton operational. However, when I turned on my system, it had been taken over by COMPUSERVE and there was no Norton--which basically told me that if I did not send them "only $19.95 a month" they would crash my system. I called the Norton tech and they spent hours, and were able to download the Norton and get most of the COMPUSERVE off my system, but it is still festering in a folder on my desk top, that also contains all of the files on my system. I cannot delete it. When I try to drag the files to the TRASH, I get a message that says "YOU CAN NOT DELETE THIS FILE." Since then, everything I do is very slow and if I have even two files open, it (does not respond). ALSO I can not RESTORE my system to a date before it was eaten by COMPUSERVE, as they also disabled my restore application and it does not work after the date of seizure. ANYBODY know about this and does anyone have any SOLUTIONS to rid myself of COMPUSERVE?????????????? THANKS S

I'm thinking that things sound bad enough that you may be looking at a reinstall of your system to clear this thing up.

-Leo

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Comment from roy on 2008-09-02

2008-09-02T18:46:47Z

Hi,
I have a serious problem with my Opera web browser "not responding" at almost every comand. I have updated my Vista with the newest servicepack and I use the latest verson of Opera. The problem occur just with Opera. Any ideas?

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Comment from Karla McCusker on 2008-08-28

2008-08-28T18:07:13Z

I cannot open my mail. It keeps saying not responding and freezes

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Comment from jennie on 2008-07-07

2008-07-07T18:51:47Z

Everytime I try to open the program, Pagemanager 7, "not repsonding" appears on the top of the screen and the computer freezes. I need to scan documents but I cant even open the program. How do I solve this problem?

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Comment from Jacqui Faulkner on 2008-06-29

2008-06-29T16:51:59Z

An update on my last comment: I SOLVED THE PROBLEM!!! I picked up a tip from another site, which was that McAfee Site Advisor is full of bugs and is prime cause of "this programe is not rsponding"... Sure enough, I disabled McAfee, and in the weeks since, I've had absolutely no problems - not one. So if you've got McAfee.....that could be your answer...

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Comment from Jacqui Faulkner on 2008-06-13

2008-06-13T21:10:39Z

I'm not a PC expert, but I'm quite certain that one aspect of this problem is the speed of your broadband connection. I had a very poor download speed with one provider, and switched to BT, paying for its premium broadband service. Now I've got it, 20% of all the links I click on, result in 'this program is not responding' etc - ie an entirely sudden, new problem I never had before, and without any other changes taking place (eg software, firewall etc). So I do wonder whether my PC is now just trying too hard and too fast for its own good!!?. One thing's for sure: it ain't solved easily, because even BT's own experts can't tell me whats wrong, and how it might be put right....

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Comment from Amos on 2008-06-11

2008-06-12T03:34:57Z

When I sign on to the internet I receive a message program not responding.

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Comment from Jack on 2008-05-28

2008-05-28T17:22:08Z

I'm developing in Access 2003, and I use a lot of VBA. I have a CPU intensive process that invariably results in a "not responding" message in Task Manager. Once that happens, my progress counters also free. If I leave it alone, it finishes on schedule. Is there something like "doevents" for Access 2003? I sure would like to be able to run my application in the background, pop in from time to time to monitor its progress, and avoid the "not responding" message. Ideas?

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Comment from ubernommen on 2008-05-17

2008-05-17T09:43:23Z

While I am scanning a document,it suddenly froze
and "program is not responding " pops up.I do not want to power off to exit - What is the correct and effective way to solve this issue ?

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Comment from Ralph on 2008-05-14

2008-05-15T00:02:07Z

My wife abd I we each have our ouw PC, they both seem to have the same problem.
Sometime a popup saying send to microsoft and sometime just not responding.
I did run sfc /scannow, did I do the right thing

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Comment from David Ha on 2008-04-26

2008-04-27T04:24:56Z

While I am scanning a document,it suddenly froze
and "program is not responding " pops up.I do not want to power off to exit - What is the correct and effective way to solve this issue ?

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Comment from Ron White on 2008-03-20

2008-03-20T13:25:58Z

I am having a problem upon start up with my laptop hanging up. Task Manager gives me this: On Screen Display Not Responding. Nothing gets me out of it but a hard shut off. Then I have to go through a disk certification scan when I start up. It usually works then. I have tried registry fix programs, antispyware, and virus scans. Nothing seems to correct the problem.

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Comment from bryan on 2008-01-30

2008-01-30T14:42:20Z

any game that i put on my pc "hangs up" after a few minutes.

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Comment from Art on 2008-01-07

2008-01-07T20:12:59Z

I have 'one' program, Incredimail, that is non responding. I have done a system restore, uninstalled and reinstalled the program, all with the same results. The home screen comes up but the cursor does nothing when I click on a task to do. The Incredimail support people have been making suggestions but nothing useful. All of my emails and address book is tied up. No other programs are running except Windows so I don't think it is a math delay. Any suggestions? I know when I uninstall not everything is deleted so when I reinstall I get the same results.

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Comment from Leo A. Notenboom on 2007-11-24

2007-11-24T16:59:27Z

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I've actually never found a reliable way for non-programmers to answer "what is
this application waiting for" when it hangs. The developer, of course, can run
the application in a debugger and often see exactly what;s going on, but those
resources are not available to the average user.

Naturally multiple threads need to interact. Typically if a UI thread hangs
even though there's another worker thread doing the heavy lifting, it's because
the UI thread is in fact waiting for something from that worker thread, or
there's a syncronization problem between the two. (OR there's something in the
UI that needs waiting for.)

Thanks,

Leo

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Comment from Michael on 2007-11-23

2007-11-23T14:44:39Z

Leo,

Your article is interesting and helps me understand what might be happening, I wonder if you have missed some other scenario. Many applications are multi-threaded, and as such perform most of their long running or CPU intensive work in a thread that does not interact with the UI. In applications like this, there should be no 'Not Responding' scenarios. However, I do see applications that this occur even though they are multi-threaded. Is there any way that the OS is actually causing the application to not respond to the OS's request to the application?

In your example, you wrote the application so it was easy to determine the problem. Is there a way to determine what an unresponsive application is doing? In your case, it was network I/O, this would have caused your application to block on the OS's low level I/O.

Thanks for any thoughts..

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Comment from Guy on 2007-10-28

2007-10-29T06:58:39Z

Hi Leo,
I read your text on the 'not responding' state of windows XP. I write some small applications myself (delphi) and when these applications have some bigger tasks to do, windows also consider them as "not responding". I built in some progress reports in my applications (10% complete, 20% etc) and when windows decides that my program is "not responding" these progress reports no longer are updated. my question is. with these longer tasks, is there a way to still remain responding according to windows ?

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Comment from someone on 2007-10-18

2007-10-18T12:17:14Z

hi leo
every time i use my anti-spyware program
spybot s&d it works perfectly untill the actual
deletion off my spyware than it comes up with
a not responding sign why is that
ps i put a fake email adress since i have over 1000
unread and junk emails

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Comment from Kim on 2007-10-13

2007-10-13T09:23:46Z

Dear Leo,

I usually log in to my Bebo account about twice a day. I enter the site http://www.bebo.com/ into my browser/address bar, and the main page always comes up with the space to enter your username and password.

I would usually type in my username and password and my home page would appear with the ch-ch-changes and all that jazz, but today when I entered my details and pressed enter to sign in, only the header of my Bebo home page loaded and then the program came up with "(Not Responding)". It has never done this before and I have no idea why. I had to close the window and reopen my browser again. I wondered if Bebo was under maintinance for the time or something, so I typed in one of my friends username and password (still using the same computer) and it took me to her home page no problem. Why is my Bebo page not working all of a sudden? Please help me! By the way, all my other internet programs/websites I visit are working absolutely fine, it's just my Bebo home page with the problem.

Regards,
Kim.

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Comment from Srini on 2007-09-26

2007-09-27T05:35:34Z

We have a VB Application which is running on win 2003(Application Server) and SQL 2005(cluster DB), to handle the performance we run around 4 instance of the same VB application on the same Application server. When we run more than 2 instances of the application (around 4), these few of the instances are going to NOT RESPONDING stage for a while and coming back to normal, this is happening for all the instances randomnly. But the CPU utilization is less than 10% and the server is normal and responding, only Apps are going to Not Responding stage.

We have recently migrated these apps from Win 2000 and SQL 2000 to new server with Win 2003 and SQL 2005 from then we are observing this issue.

Please help me if you have any solution for this.

Regards,
Srini

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Comment from Leo A. Notenboom on 2007-06-01

2007-06-01T15:27:20Z

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I missed a step. Assuming this is VB6, add a call to DoEvents() in the 60x1
loop as well.

Not sure about VB.NET ... I believe there's something similar.

Leo
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Comment from Mani on 2007-05-31

2007-06-01T05:51:54Z

Hi.

Firstly, let me thank you, for your reply.

I followed your suggestion, but, as long as the program is in the 60 iteration for..loop, the application shows not responding in the task manager.
I noticed one thing though, as soon as the program comes out of the loop the program returns to running state in the task manager.

Is there any other workaround?

Regards,
Mani

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Comment from Leo A. Notenboom on 2007-05-31

2007-06-01T03:23:55Z

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Because for those 60 seconds your application isn't responding.

Try putting a 1 second delay in a loop of 60 iterations. The performance impact
will be negligible and Windows should be happier.

Leo

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Comment from Mani on 2007-05-30

2007-05-31T05:21:24Z

Hi Leo,

I have a VB code in which I make the execution sleep for 60 seconds using the sleep method in Kernel32.dll
The trouble is the task manager the program application is listed and shows that its 'not responding'. Although the intended operation of updating my oracle database every 60 seconds is being performed as desired.
Why is it showing not responding in the task manager?

Regards,
Mani

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Comment from Jack on 2007-04-02

2007-04-03T03:00:59Z

I'm on AOL9SE by Compac and VerDSL, a computer novice.Every thing seems slow,"not resp" comes and goes on occasion. Can you help or should I hire local GEEK?? I read the article!!

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Comment from Seenu on 2007-03-30

2007-03-30T10:58:11Z

Hi Leo
Iam using R Connect dialer in my laptop. After get connected it is working propertly and after some time it is hanging.
plz help me in the same..

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Comment from rachel on 2007-03-12

2007-03-12T19:23:42Z

my emial address is not responding can u give me some good advice. cheers

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Comment from dom on 2007-03-11

2007-03-11T11:34:00Z

hi leo, when i try and download anything off the internet i get the download box come up but nothing actually downloads, when i click on the box i then get a message saying 'file download not responding'. help is much appreciated

cheers

dom

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Comment from george on 2006-11-16

2006-11-17T02:15:03Z

when i try to open photoimpression4 or funhouse i get the timepiece cursor in photoimpression and it just sits there blinking and in funhouse i get timepiece and it just sits there doing nothing,both programs say program not responding when i try to exit them and i have to use control,alt,del to get out of either program,what is going on,and how can i get them to work? thank you

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Comment from george on 2006-11-16

2006-11-17T02:10:26Z

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Comment from Leo Notenboom on 2006-09-20

2006-09-21T03:58:38Z

Does the document eventually open?

Are you up to date with patches for both Windows and Office?

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Comment from Theresa on 2006-09-20

2006-09-20T14:43:56Z

I get the "Not responding" message when I try open a large document using Microsoft Word. Is this a known problem and if so, how do I resolve it. Thanks Leo

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Comment from victoria abrams on 2006-08-08

2006-08-08T16:19:39Z

hi leo. i am using IE7 beta3 with xp sp2. when browsing this happens often. i should probably tell you that have cable internet access. microsoft said it is a data transmission error (that the pages are loading incompletely) and that is why i can't click on the page and i have to use the task manager to close the browser. IE provider says it's IE7's beta version. I'm just learning this stuff but is it possible that this is a RAM issue. our total is 512. we have autocad, illustrator cs2, and flash pro to name a few.your help would be appreciated. thanks

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