Assessing Application Failures

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Unlike MS-DOS and earlier versions of Windows, an application failure won’t bring your system to a complete halt. Most application failures are recoverable, and in many cases you won’t even need to reboot your computer to re-establish a working configuration. That is not to say that a system crash is impossible. It happens very infrequently.

Most often the worst actors are applications written for MS-DOS or 16-bit Windows applications. These programs tend to crash more frequently than 32-bit Windows applications—a good reason to upgrade.

If you have a malfunctioning application, bring up the Task Manager and close the process down. You can access the Task Manager by either using your mouse or your keyboard (useful in case either is hung up by a malfunction).

To use your keyboard to close an application, complete the following steps:

1.	Press Ctrl+Alt+Delete to open the Windows NT Security dialog box.
2.	Click on the Task Manager button there to open the Task Manager.
3.	Click on the Applications tab (see Figure 7.7).
4.	Select the offending application and click on the End Task button.
5.	Close the Task Manager.

You can also open the Task Manager by moving the cursor over the Status bar area and right-clicking, and then selecting the Task Manager command.

If you need to end a 16-bit Windows or an MS-DOS application, you must close the entire session. When you close a 32-bit Windows application, only the process or thread needs to be closed.

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Further Information

• Using the Application Log
• Service Failures