When Your Computer Acts Funny - Reboot!
Computer is acting funny. The mouse doesn’t seem to want to work right. The Internet connection is off. Strange looking video is appearing on the monitor. The computer is slow. Sound familiar? When this happens, you have a choice: you can spin your wheels for several minutes troubleshooting, or you can simply reboot.
No – don’t kick your computer. Shut it down and turn it back on again. Just like we humans do from time to time, your computer gets a little confused. There are any number of things that can be happening. A driver is misbehaving, memory is clogged with garbage, too many programs are loaded and you have run low on computing resources. Who knows? One of the simplest things you can do to start eliminating many of these things is to simply shut down and restart. More times than not, the simple act of rebooting a computer brings it back to life and acting normally again. Restarting clears out memory that was somehow not freed up as it is supposed to be. Restarting also reloads those misbehaving drivers. This is known as a warm reboot – where you don’t really turn the computer off, you just tell your computer to reload the operating system.
“But my computer is completely frozen – how do I do a normal restart?” In these cases you just have to perform an unnatural act and shut down manually. (Don’t worry – if you are running Windows XP, it is tough – it can handle it and recover fairly nicely.) Most computers these days do not have a hard power switch – but rather a soft switch that interacts with the motherboard and what is known as a switching mode power supply. Don’t worry about the reasons or the technical jargon. It just means that instead of the computer turning off immediately when you hit the power button, it has to go through a somewhat lengthier power-down sequence. What this means to you is that you have to hold the power switch for about eight seconds before the computer turns off. Wait thirty more seconds, then turn it back on. This process is known as a cold reboot, by the way.
Rebooting is one of the simplest and usually most effective means of recovering a confused system. When the computer is acting funny, save all your work and reboot. Now – let me get back to work on my Linux computer – it doesn’t seem to have that problem :)
No – don’t kick your computer. Shut it down and turn it back on again. Just like we humans do from time to time, your computer gets a little confused. There are any number of things that can be happening. A driver is misbehaving, memory is clogged with garbage, too many programs are loaded and you have run low on computing resources. Who knows? One of the simplest things you can do to start eliminating many of these things is to simply shut down and restart. More times than not, the simple act of rebooting a computer brings it back to life and acting normally again. Restarting clears out memory that was somehow not freed up as it is supposed to be. Restarting also reloads those misbehaving drivers. This is known as a warm reboot – where you don’t really turn the computer off, you just tell your computer to reload the operating system.
“But my computer is completely frozen – how do I do a normal restart?” In these cases you just have to perform an unnatural act and shut down manually. (Don’t worry – if you are running Windows XP, it is tough – it can handle it and recover fairly nicely.) Most computers these days do not have a hard power switch – but rather a soft switch that interacts with the motherboard and what is known as a switching mode power supply. Don’t worry about the reasons or the technical jargon. It just means that instead of the computer turning off immediately when you hit the power button, it has to go through a somewhat lengthier power-down sequence. What this means to you is that you have to hold the power switch for about eight seconds before the computer turns off. Wait thirty more seconds, then turn it back on. This process is known as a cold reboot, by the way.
Rebooting is one of the simplest and usually most effective means of recovering a confused system. When the computer is acting funny, save all your work and reboot. Now – let me get back to work on my Linux computer – it doesn’t seem to have that problem :)
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