How to restart a laptop with just a keyboard

Restarting your laptop with just a keyboard can be very handy if the touchpad goes haywire or your mouse is playing up. With just a few keystrokes, you can restart your laptop quickly and easily and have it back up and running properly in no time. If it still doesn’t work after that, check out our guide to common Windows 11 issues.

Here’s how to restart your laptop using the keyboard.

Alt+F4

You may know Alt+F4 as a quick way to close a game or app, or you may have been caught off guard by someone jokingly suggesting it as a solution to a problem. But Alt + F4 can also be used to restart a laptop.

Step 1: Press Alt+F4 to close all running applications. Press it again and again until they are all closed, then press it again to bring up the Shut Down Windows menu.

2nd step: Use the arrow keys to select Reboot in the drop-down list.

Step 3: press the Tongue key to change your selection until it is on the ALL RIGHT button, then press Enter to restart your laptop.

Ctrl + Alt + Del

The old Ctrl + Alt + Del command is emblematic of computing history. Previously it allowed restarting a system, but now it just shows an important menu. From here, however, you can restart your laptop by pressing a few more keys.

Step 1: Press Ctrl + Alt + Of. It should bring up the graphical identification and authentication screen, or “GINA” (that’s its real name), which offers a number of useful options.

2nd step: press the Tongue until the indicator changes from the middle options to those at the bottom right, and eventually to the power button indicator. It’s the circle with a vertical line going through the top.

Step 3: press the Enter then use the arrow keys to select Reboot.

Step 4: Press Enter to restart the laptop.

If you ever want to go beyond just restarting your laptop and resetting it to factory settings, perhaps to resell it or just to improve performance, here’s how to reset a Widows laptop.

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