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to dave
Re: Why is it bad to reboot a Windows PC?said by dave:There's an equally vocal bunch of people that say you should always shut computers down rather than suspend or hibernate. Windows is buggy and reboots are often called for. The first thing I always do when I get a support ticket from one of my users is to check the uptime. Most often a simple reboot fixes whatever is their issue. Often I refuse to work on the ticket if the user refuses to reboot. |
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dave Premium Member join:2000-05-04 not in ohio
2 recommendations |
dave
Premium Member
2012-Aug-4 12:31 pm
said by LLigetfa:Windows is buggy and reboots are often called for. Apparently you must be using a different 'Windows' than I am. Between work and home, I never reboot except for Windows updates that require it. This seems to reinforce vaxvms 's implicit point that there's a lot of superstition involved. |
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plencnerb Premium Member join:2000-09-25 53403-1242
2 recommendations |
said by dave:said by LLigetfa:Windows is buggy and reboots are often called for. Apparently you must be using a different 'Windows' than I am. Between work and home, I never reboot except for Windows updates that require it. This seems to reinforce vaxvms 's implicit point that there's a lot of superstition involved. Now in the case of the older OS's (95, 98, 98se and ME) this was the case. If you did not reboot often enough, your system would grind to a crawl. However, I feel that problem is no longer an issue. Unless an install of a new application requires it, or I am running my monthly install of security updates from Microsoft, I don't reboot, and I don't have any problems with my system, or any of the other 2 systems in my home. One of them is Windows XP, and it never has any problems if it is not rebooted for weeks. Back to the OP's question, I really don't see a problem to reboot a system. However, I will say that if you are in a production environment, and the "Windows PC" you are rebooting hosts your SQL Server Database and that ties in to an application that is used by 500 or so users, and you "just reboot it" without proper notification to your user base, that would be "bad", but on a whole different level! --Brian |
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sivranVive Vivaldi Premium Member join:2003-09-15 Irving, TX |
sivran
Premium Member
2012-Aug-4 1:51 pm
said by plencnerb:Now in the case of the older OS's (95, 98, 98se and ME) this was the case. If you did not reboot often enough, your system would grind to a crawl.
Naahh I used to run my 98SE for weeks before rebooting. I discovered that I could do that after I stopped using two particular applications: ZoneAlarm and IE. Even so a month was about all it could take. |
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to plencnerb
said by plencnerb:Now in the case of the older OS's (95, 98, 98se and ME) this was the case. If you did not reboot often enough, your system would grind to a crawl.
However, I feel that problem is no longer an issue. Microsoft and Dell, both, have support articles that state restarting a Windows computer fixes most issues (or words to that affect). The only Windows box we have, for testing web sites, frequently gets rebooted because it slows to a crawl after a week or two of heavy testing. This was true when it was a XP box and it's true now that it's Vista. |
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to LLigetfa
said by LLigetfa:said by dave:There's an equally vocal bunch of people that say you should always shut computers down rather than suspend or hibernate. Windows is buggy and reboots are often called for. The first thing I always do when I get a support ticket from one of my users is to check the uptime. Most often a simple reboot fixes whatever is their issue. Often I refuse to work on the ticket if the user refuses to reboot. +100000000. Dave |
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1 recommendation |
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to dave
said by dave:said by LLigetfa:Windows is buggy and reboots are often called for. Apparently you must be using a different 'Windows' than I am. Between work and home, I never reboot except for Windows updates that require it. This seems to reinforce vaxvms 's implicit point that there's a lot of superstition involved. On the corporate systems (desktops and laptops) that I used to have, I almost never rebooted them unless it was absolutely necessary, and I had far fewer problems in general that most of my coworkers did, who would shut theirs down at the end of the day and reboot in the morning. But these were just running the standard corporate stuff - Office, Outlook, terminal emulators, and so on. For general computing use at home, though, where I might run any number of things, I've found that in many cases the only way to ensure a stable system (or to recover one that has become unstable) is to reboot it, so I do this on a regular basis. But I've also come to expect these systems not to always reboot cleanly, and to sometimes instead exhibit truly bizarre behavior, as Windows is so wont to do. |
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vaxvmsferroequine fan Premium Member join:2005-03-01 Polar Park |
vaxvms
Premium Member
2012-Aug-5 2:33 pm
said by scross:... and I had far fewer problems in general that most of my coworkers did, who would shut theirs down at the end of the day and reboot in the morning. Can you elaborate on the type of problems your coworkers had that you didn't? Hardware? Software? Lost (destroyed/damaged) files? How often? |
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scross
Member
2012-Aug-5 3:21 pm
said by vaxvms:said by scross:... and I had far fewer problems in general that most of my coworkers did, who would shut theirs down at the end of the day and reboot in the morning. Can you elaborate on the type of problems your coworkers had that you didn't? Hardware? Software? Lost (destroyed/damaged) files? How often? Well, let's see, it's been a few years now, and because I so often heard them complaining about this I eventually just got to the point where I didn't ask for the details, and instead would say "Just do what I do and put it in standby!" And then new corporate security policies were put into place that forced systems into standby mode after a short amount of inactive time anyway, which kind of rendered the whole thing moot, and people just stopped turning them off. Then new corporate policies were issued about turning equipment off in order to save power, but by that time I was working at home (meaning that the standby and power policies didn't really apply to me) and I wasn't really privy to the problems my coworkers were still having. But here are some things I do remember, because I still run into them on occasion myself. One of my coworkers was religious about shutting her system down at the end of the day - using correct procedures - only to all-too-often have it hang at the shutdown screen and just sit there forever and ever and ever (it should be noted here that if this happens and you wait long enough, the system will often go ahead and eventually shut itself down, but there is no guarantee of this). Since she was in a hurry (had to pick up her kids or whatever), she would ask me to keep an eye on it to make sure that it did eventually shut down, but as often as not after having it sit there for ages (sometimes hours) I would have to hold the power button in order to make it go down. And she eventually got to the point where she wouldn't wait more than a few minutes before she resorted to this, too. Oddly enough, I almost never had this problem, even though we were using identical equipment, running almost identical software, were on the same network, and so on. Another issue that they ran into (and I still do on occasion) is when the systems were coming back up. Since almost everything today is networked, when Windows is coming back up and has some problem with network connectivity, all too often instead of just saying this and moving on, it will hang there with a blank or unresponsive screen. In a corporate environment with lots of network connections and Windows (and other) servers and password policies that may have forced server passwords to have expired overnight, this can and did cause some really nasty problems at times. I still run into this at home on occasion, and it can be a real problem on the road when my laptop is out of its element and can't connect to my network. Things tend to run smoother here if I don't power down, but sometimes I have to anyway (airline rules and such), and in those cases it can take an inordinate amount of time to just get to (or to get past) the Windows login screen when it is coming back up. Another issue with laptops is battery charging. Very often if the battery charge is low, the laptop will simply refuse to power back up after being powered down, even when it is plugged into an outlet. The trick here usually is to remove the battery, then power the laptop up without it, then reinstall the battery. Situations like this can be made worse by people who always leave their laptops plugged in and never really use the battery, because that can sometimes lead to the battery dying an earlier death than usual. |
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dave Premium Member join:2000-05-04 not in ohio |
to scross
said by scross:But I've also come to expect these systems not to always reboot cleanly, and to sometimes instead exhibit truly bizarre behavior, as Windows is so wont to do. Yeah, this is another of those things that apparently happens to every Windows user except me. (I assume it's because I'm fairly discriminating in what I'll install) |
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scross
Member
2012-Aug-5 4:38 pm
said by dave:said by scross:But I've also come to expect these systems not to always reboot cleanly, and to sometimes instead exhibit truly bizarre behavior, as Windows is so wont to do. Yeah, this is another of those things that apparently happens to every Windows user except me. (I assume it's because I'm fairly discriminating in what I'll install) Yeah, well, like I said, my work systems tended to be relatively stable, given the software they were running and the way I handled them (standby, etc). While the same systems sitting around me might be relatively unstable - but such pseudo-random behavior is just one of the many joys of being a Microsoft customer (having been one for over 30 years now myself). Something that I forget to add was this: I was also in the habit of doing fairly routine maintenance and cleanup on my work laptop - clearing out temporary files, flushing caches, doing disk scans and reorganizations on a regular basis, and so on. These are things that my coworkers usually didn't bother to do or know how to do (sometimes even the Windows people didn't know how to do these things, either, or would insist that they were unnecessary). So I probably managed to head off some of the potential problems that others ran into. My home systems are another story. While I still do the preventive maintenance processes on those, too, they might be running any number of interesting programs or visiting any number of interesting websites or whatever, so I expect a little more misbehavior out of them. But a lot of this misbehavior is still often inexplicable, though, and Microsoft is often of very little help here. |
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Cheese Premium Member join:2003-10-26 Naples, FL |
to LLigetfa
said by LLigetfa:said by dave:There's an equally vocal bunch of people that say you should always shut computers down rather than suspend or hibernate. Windows is buggy and reboots are often called for. Um...wrong... |
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scross
Member
2012-Aug-5 7:56 pm
said by Cheese:said by LLigetfa:said by dave:There's an equally vocal bunch of people that say you should always shut computers down rather than suspend or hibernate. Windows is buggy and reboots are often called for. Um...wrong... Of course! For the sake of completeness, he should have said "Windows, and its drivers, and the applications which run on it, are buggy and reboots are often called for." |
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