If your computer freezes for whatever reason (e.g. your keyboard and mouse are not responding) and you need to power down and turn it off, here are some tricks for you to circumvent the lack of response from your input devices.

One way to kill the power (or perform a "hard" shutdown) is to press and hold your computer's power button for five to eight seconds.

If that doesn't work, find the master switch on the back of your computer and toggle it off. If your computer doesn't have a switch, you should be able to find the power light and switch it off.

You also have the option to simply unplug the computer from the power outlet.

• Keep in mind that these actions should be reserved for emergency "last resort" situations. When your computer is on, the hard drive could be spinning, reading and writing data. Turning that off in the middle of a spinning process will more than likely cause some slight damage to your hard drive. It is equivalent to shutting off the power and lights in a large warehouse full of people working, moving boxes and transporting items. Things are more likely than not to get broken, dropped or mishandled.