Anybody who has used Windows has experienced situations in which the computer has locked up or frozen. Those of you who use Windows NT experience it less frequently, and those who remain the blissful world of DOS may never have experienced the pleasures described in this article. However, the rest of us recognize a frozen computer as a common occurrence. We survive the problem, but the data that was prepared since the last save is gone.

These frozen computers take various forms. There's the General Protection Fault (it does have a good reason or excuse, but nobody cares about it when the data goes to never-never land). One of my favorites is the Blue Screen of Death. Your screen turns blue and you receive an incomprehensible warning message in computer talk.

I like to tell my clients that the data is not really gone. It is still there, and it's waiting for you. When you pass on to a Better World, your entire life will scroll by before you. If you can stop the action when it gets to this screen, you will be able to read the Heavenly replay of your magnum opus in glowing Technicolor. Ahhh, but you wanted something more immediate? Sorry. Nobody in This World will be able to help you. Please be patient.

Some programs have periodic automatic Save features. Granted, this will force you to pause for a very brief period of time while the hard drive grinds away, but you will have the comforting knowledge that your work is being saved whether you like it or not. Other programs, such as Word, have an automatic recover feature. Of course, when your data is automatically recovered, the first thing you should do is - to save it!

Look at the problem a different way, and find various solutions, in the next installment in this series.

Click here for the next installment in this series of articles on saving your work.

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