serious system crash!!

[joffvaio]

i was using sonic stage the other day and my system crashed everything was frozen so i decided the only option was to hold the power button down and force shutdown when i tryed to restart the computer a message came up displaying "opperating system not found" i decided to leave it alone. the next day i turned the laptop on and the screen kept going from dark to bright the macine finaly started up and is working now
can anyone try and explain what happened and if it is advisable to do anything?
thank you

[Lizzie]

the only option was to hold the power button down and force shutdown 

Ouch, that’s the last option.
You should have firstly did ctrl+alt+del and it would have given you the task manager and in the application tab you could have shut sonic from there. If that didn’t work go to the processes tab and right click on sonic and click ‘end process now’ and that should in 99.9% of all cases shut the program down.

As for your current problem someone else may be able to help you.

[febs]

I dont think Ctrl+Alt+Delete was an option for him Lizzie as he states that his computer had completely frozen.