Why Does My Computer Freeze Up Using Facebook?

Facebook, the social networking site, is a complex website running many processes at once. At any given time, you may have running a chat program, a Flash-based game and other processes to manage the rest of the page. These processes can cause your browser or your computer to freeze. There are several possible causes, so learn what steps to take to quickly fix the problem.

According to Facebook, it has 750 million active users at the time of publication. Even with many servers running, sometimes the servers that handle all that internet traffic get bogged down. This can cause Facebook to slow or even freeze. Try reloading the page for increased speed.

Some browsers have trouble managing the many concurrent aspects of Facebook, especially when Facebook is in the middle of making changes. If Facebook freezes, reload the page to see if it's just a browser problem. If that doesn't work, try closing the browser and restarting it. As a last resort, try opening Facebook in a different browser.

For a frozen browser that won't reload or close, you'll need to force the browser to quit. Hold down "Ctrl-Alt-Delete" to display a list of running programs. Select the browser and click "Force Quit" to close the browser. This usually un-freezes the rest of the computer.

If your entire computer is frozen, it's probably because when the browser froze, it interfered with other sub-processes in the computer. The best way to fix this is to restart the computer.