Mum’s frozen laptop screen

My Mum doesn’t call as much as she used to. So when I had a missed call from my Mum, I thought it could be an emergency. When I rang her back, she said her computer was stuck on the lock screen.

It’s hard work though because she is terrible at explaining problems or what she attempts to do, then she often finds it hard to understand my simple instructions. 

She said holding the power button ain’t turning it off, which is weird. I thought the classic “turn it off and on again” would sort it out, so I said to “let the battery drain”. So she said “it can’t be the battery because she can see what is on screen”.

So I explained that the plan was that “letting the battery drain will turn it off. Then you can turn it back on again when plugged in“.

I couldn’t think of any other options.

She said she was “pressing Alt+F2 but it wasn’t doing anything”. I said “what does that shortcut do?“, and she said “I dunno“. I asked who told her to press it, and she said “myself“.＼（〇_ｏ）／

I wondered if she meant Alt+F4.

My Mum popped around to my house with her laptop. Clicking wouldn’t transition to the login screen, and you could move the mouse fine – so it wasn’t frozen. I pressed ctrl+alt+del and it unlocked. I locked it again and it went back to the login screen straight away and would respond to mouse clicks, so ¯\_( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)_/¯

I bet letting the battery drain would have solved it as well, but she kept on charging it. I do wonder if her fictional shortcut of Alt+F2 was meant to be ctrl+alt+del. This is what I mean when I say she is terrible at explaining problems or what she attempts to do. Then it ends up being frustrating for the both of us.