I received a question from subscriber Joseph Baker who was having problems with his Windows computer. For some reason, his “Switch User” button wasn’t working.

The Switch User function (Start Logoff) is a powerful feature of Windows XP that allows multiple different IDs to use the computer– which would allow his wife to switch the active user from him to her without logging him off

Unfortunately, while I could think of a couple possible reasons for his problem, I didn’t have anything definitive:

1. Windows may have been hung — it happens
2. Swapping users takes a lot of memory if you had a number of programs open. Sometimes, when Windows is swapping real memory to the hard drive(called “pagiing” to “virtual memory”) and vice versa, Windows will seem hung but isn’t really,
3. The program in your user session may have crashed — and needed a Control-Alt-Delete to pull up task manager to close it Undoubtedly there are other possibiliites. If the problem happens again or routinely, look into it. If it was just this once, blame it on the phase of the moon or Bill Gates’ Revenge.

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