Like what goes inside the hardware that creates this scenario.
In: Technology
What’s going on the hardware typically isn’t the problem.
It’s the software.
Computers work by running computations in a series of steps, following these steps and instructions accurately And accessing stored information to complete those steps when needed.
When computers hang/freeze it is typically because somehow these steps/instructions have gotten done out of order. Or because the processed is getting hit with so many steps at once it can’t keep up and starts to bottle neck.
Say for example a computer running a really simple process,(as in this is SUPER over simplified): Find Y
The computer knows that Y = X + 2
So step 1 is assign X a value
Then step 2 is plug X in and solve the problem
Then step 3 is return the solved Y value.
If somehow step one gets lost or skipped then the computer might just freeze up on step 2 because it doesn’t have a value to move forward with. (Again this is super oversimplified, and this super simple bug has solution, but it’s just a conceptual example)
Oh that can have a multitude of reasons. One are “infinite loops”. Meaning in order to make programming easier there is usually the option in programming languages to say “make that X times” or “to this, until a condition is met”.
Now if for whatever reason that condition can never be reached idk it’s a loop counting files in a folder and every iteration of the loop creates a new file or something like that, so everything after the loop isn’t executed because the loop is still busy. So the system might think “ok the task is difficult, allocate MORE POWER”. So it throws more power at it (delaying even more actions) but the task is still impossible and so the one program that is in a problematic condition halts the rest.
Another could be race conditions like if a can’t move on before b is calculated and b can’ move on before a is calculated so each of them is waiting for the other to finish and neither can finish without the other.
Or as others have mentioned bottlenecks, like how if you hold a water bottle upside down not all the water immediately drops out but how the small exit point leads to the water stopping itself.
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