In all these cases, the cure is to turn off the computer immediately. If you're lucky, the computer will let you save your work first, and if you're very lucky, it will allow you to log off in an orderly way. If it won't, just cut off the power and wait about ten seconds. Start it up again, and it should be all better. In fact, it's good for your computer's health to turn it off and restart it frequently - on a nightly basis if you use it a lot.

     Mike Hodapp gave me the above crash avoidance tip several years ago, and it saved my bacon over and over, back when I had an infected computer. (Which is how I got so interested in computer safety, in case you wonder.)

     An almost-crash is a danger sign, even if the computer recovers. Do run your anti-spyware and anti-virus afterward, and make sure your firewall is in place. If you lack one of these items, and if you know where to go, there is good protection available for free. Find information on this in the section on Internet Safety.

WEB SEARCH FOR BEGINNERS

     Those wonderful ABOUT people have a website that takes you step by step into searching the Internet.

http://websearch.about.com/od/internetresearch/a/searchstarters.htm

LEARN MICROSOFT WORD, POWERPOINT, MORE

     EDUMAX will not only teach you MICROSOFT WORD and similar programs for free; it will teach computer programming, computer hardware basics, and much else.

http://www.edumax.com/