Windows 11 has a hidden emergency restart feature you probably dont know about

Date:
Tue, 20 Jun 2023 09:59:56 +0000

Description:
Has your Windows 11 PC locked up? A hidden emergency restart feature could be your best bet to rescue it.

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Windows 11 has an emergency restart feature thats tucked away, and youve likely never seen it, but the function could come in handy if your PC freezes up.

Indeed, this option has been hidden deep in the restart machinery of Microsofts OS since Windows Vista, apparently (so yes, its in Windows 10 as well as 11, and all the other outdated incarnations of Windows going back to the big V).

What exactly does this feature do? It reboots your PC when all has gone awry, with the warning: Click OK to immediately restart. Any unsaved data will be lost. Use this only as a last resort.

Cant you just reboot your PC anyway, using the Start menu (Power button)? Indeed you can, and thats the way to go normally, but the emergency restart option is for situations where the interface has partly fallen over when your system has frozen, and the Start menu is unresponsive (or a crashed app is interfering with the reboot process, stalling it).

In such cases, as Betanews discovered, you can press CTRL+ALT+DELETE
together, and heres the clever bit, hold down the CTRL key and click on the Power button at the bottom-right of the screen (the icon thats a little
circle with a line at 12 oclock).

That will put you into the Emergency Restart screen, with the message mentioned above, so you can then click OK and an emergency reboot will be performed. Analysis: A useful extra escape route but not without risks

This is a pretty cool ability to have, because if you cant action a normal reboot (via the Start menu) for whatever reason including a crashed application messing that option up, as mentioned you can (hopefully) access this emergency restart.

Now, Microsoft only advises it as a last resort (and this is maybe why the feature isnt documented, too) because its a short and sharp reboot that
doesnt bother with any of the pleasantries that a normal restart executes. Meaning all that housekeeping stuff that really should be done before
shutting down the system. It quickly kills everything and turns off the
system without safeguards, but that comes with some risks ( data corruption
is the most obvious potential peril that springs to mind).

However, and this is the key bit, its still a (somewhat) safer option than physically powering off your PC when it has locked up (by pressing the reset button, if your computer has one, or holding down the power button or simply yanking out the plug, which is the real last resort).

So, if you cant reboot any other way, this is a useful last-ditch method to know about. Of course, if your PC has frozen to the extent that even CTRL+ALT+DELETE doesnt do anything, then youll have no choice but to turn to the power switch (or plug).

While were on the subject of cool Windows 11 shortcuts you might not know about, heres another one we were reminded of on Twitter this morning. As Jen Gentlemen, Senior Program Manager at Microsoft, points out, any time you want live captions to appear in a game or when watching a video (if the source content doesnt have its own captions), just press the Windows key + CTRL + L together to swiftly turn them on.

Via PC Gamer , PC World



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Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/computing/windows/windows-11-has-a-hidden-emergency- restart-feature-you-probably-dont-know-about


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