Physically pressing the restart & off buttons

[JTrader]

Hi

sometimes if my PC has slowed down, frozen etc. i can't be bothered waiting, and physically press the restart, or the off button on the tower, if it has frozen when it is meant to be shutting down.

Ten years ago, people used to say this could do damage, as you're not properly shutting the PC down.
I don't know if this is still the case with the Windows XP onwards generation of PC's.

It's never done my PC any harm that i'm aware of, although my PC seems to load up and close down much slower now than when i bought it 3-4 years ago. Unless I've got some work open that needs saving, i consider hitting these buttons the quickest/most effective way of solving the problem.

What do you know on this?

Many thanks.

 

[Slapshot]

Hi

sometimes if my PC has slowed down, frozen etc. i can't be bothered waiting, and physically press the restart, or the off button on the tower, if it has frozen when it is meant to be shutting down.

Ten years ago, people used to say this could do damage, as you're not properly shutting the PC down.
I don't know if this is still the case with the Windows XP onwards generation of PC's.

It's never done my PC any harm that i'm aware of, although my PC seems to load up and close down much slower now than when i bought it 3-4 years ago. Unless I've got some work open that needs saving, i consider hitting these buttons the quickest/most effective way of solving the problem.

What do you know on this?

any thanks.

It's not the advisable thing to do, as windows files that maybe in use at the time can become corrupted if not closed correctly. However with the advent of XP and system file protection the operating system is less prone to corruption.

The main problem is 3rd party drivers screwing up and causing the machine to blue screen. one again this is not so frequent but happens all the same.

 

[Splitlink]

Hi

sometimes if my PC has slowed down, frozen etc. i can't be bothered waiting, and physically press the restart, or the off button on the tower, if it has frozen when it is meant to be shutting down.

Ten years ago, people used to say this could do damage, as you're not properly shutting the PC down.
I don't know if this is still the case with the Windows XP onwards generation of PC's.

It's never done my PC any harm that i'm aware of, although my PC seems to load up and close down much slower now than when i bought it 3-4 years ago. Unless I've got some work open that needs saving, i consider hitting these buttons the quickest/most effective way of solving the problem.

What do you know on this?

Many thanks.

I think it's best to use the mouse to shut down, that's why they have the procedures to do it. My son, who is the soul of patience---doesn't get it from me, I'm afraid---- tells me that you can lose data, that's stored on the disk, if you don't shut down properly. It's like a power cut.

Split

 

[fibonelli]

firefox and java seem to often fight on my pc
ctl alt del sorts 'em out :cheesy:

 

[trendie]

JT,

the best bet is, as already suggested, is ti shut-down properly.

chances are, over the years, you have downloaded all manner of applications that you no longer use, but your start-up scripts still triggers off. ( I know, I had that with things like paltalk, etc )

It may be worth you seeing which apps are part of your start-up and shut-down scripts, and remove them from your PC or not have them automatically start when you boot up.

I think rossored is a PC-whizz. (its to do with autoexec.bat and stuff)

EDIT: autoexec.bat is old stuff, where you can control evertything yourself. its something else, but the principle is about what gets booted on start-up and shut-down. (still toying with last-century toys)

 

[Slapshot]

to look at whats running on startup

Run MSCONFIG from Start -> Run

Be careful though what you disable, some of the names and descriptions are not always very helpful.

 

[JTrader]

JT,

the best bet is, as already suggested, is ti shut-down properly.

chances are, over the years, you have downloaded all manner of applications that you no longer use, but your start-up scripts still triggers off. ( I know, I had that with things like paltalk, etc )

It may be worth you seeing which apps are part of your start-up and shut-down scripts, and remove them from your PC or not have them automatically start when you boot up.

I think rossored is a PC-whizz. (its to do with autoexec.bat and stuff)

EDIT: autoexec.bat is old stuff, where you can control evertything yourself. its something else, but the principle is about what gets booted on start-up and shut-down. (still toying with last-century toys)

Thanks chaps

I used to have a few things that did start up unneccesarily, but i disabled the automatic launch when windows starts option.

I also used "start up inspector for windows" (freeware) from download.com which I found quite useful and enabled me to further reduce what automatically launches with windos. I think you've got to double-check everything you chose to disable before doing so, but disabling these processes helped/helps reduce demands on RAM.

 

[roguetrader]

This isn't a bad program for tired computers, downloaded the free trial and ran it on my sisters computer speeded up a bit, then just uninstalled it.
http://www.tune-up.com/