Restarting your laptop with just a keyboard can be super handy if the touchpad goes haywire or your mouse is playing up. With just a few keys, you can reboot your laptop quickly and easily, getting it back working again properly in no time. If it still doesn’t work after that, better check our ourcommon Windows 11 problems guide.
Here’s how to restart your laptop with the keyboard.
Difficulty
What You Need
Laptop with working keyboard
You might know Alt + F4 as a quick way to close down a game or app, or you might 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:PressAlt + F4to close down any apps that are running. Press it again and again until they’re all closed, then press it one more time to bring up the Shut Down Windows menu.
Step 2:Use the arrow keys to selectRestartfrom the drop down list.
Step 3:Press theTabkey to change your selection until it’s on theOKbutton, then pressEnterto reboot your laptop.
Ctrl + Alt + Del
The old Ctrl + Alt + Del command is an iconic one in computing history. It used to hard reboot a system, but now it just brings up an important menu. From there, though, you can reboot your laptop with a few more keypresses.
Step 1:PressCtrl+Alt+Del. It should bring up the Graphical Identification and Authentication, or “GINA” screen (that is its real name) which has a number of useful options.
Step 2:Press theTabkey until the indicator moves from the central options to the bottom-right ones, and eventually to the power button indicator. It’s the circle with a vertical line through the top of it.
Step 3:Press theEnterkey, then use the arrow keys to selectRestart.
Step 4:PressEnterto reboot the laptop.
If you ever want to go a few steps beyond just rebooting your laptop and want to factory reset it, maybe for resale or just to improve performance, here’show to reset a Widows laptop.
