When we have a serious problem with Windows 11 or with one of the applications we use, the first thing we usually do if the computer does not respond as it should is the classic “control + alt + delete” try to get into Task Manager and force quit that application or process that is causing the problem.

If we fail to find a solution this way, we can repeat the process and shut down or restart your PC, something that is only necessary in extreme cases, when the application or process we want to end also does not respond when we force it to close through Task Manager. It has saved me on more than one occasion in all the years I’ve been using Windows, and I’m sure it will be a big help to you too.

Also, I’m sure many of you are familiar with this keyboard shortcut, but did you know that Windows 11 has emergency restart for extremely difficult situations? Well that’s right, and this emergency reboot it will allow us to get out of situations in which there is nothing we can do resort to the Task Manager, nor to the classic “control + alt + delete”.

A hard reset will, as the name suggests, restart the device directly, which means that we will lose all data and information that we did not save before. also ckills all active processes and applications, and end any lockup or problem that was preventing us from using the computer.

How to use emergency restart in Windows 11

It’s very easy, we just have to press the control key on the keyboard and the shutdown button on the computer at the same time. This will open the emergency reset menu which informs us that doing this reset will result in the loss of all unsaved data and information and that we should only use it as last resource.

Emergency restart is nothing new or exclusive to Windows 11, in fact it is available since the arrival of Windows NT 3.1 back in 1993, but it lost its importance so much that few users today remembered it and many did not even remember how it was used. You can see how it worked in each of the different versions of Windows in the attached video, and yes, it was also available in Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 10.