Long story short, it matters and it matters a lot. Although its easy to use these terms interchangeably its important to know the difference. Your PC Health and security depends on it. Understanding the difference will help you not only know the difference between Restart (or Reboot) or Shutdown but help determine which one is the best for what your trying to accomplish. Let’s go over what each mean and when its best to either Restart or Shutdown.
What does it mean to Reboot and/or Restart your PC? And when to do it.
Restarting is when your PC stops what it is doing, it closes your programs, operating and application services, clears memory and cycles your computer off and on automatically and reloads everything fresh.
Restarting/Rebooting your PC is especially important when installing updates. This ensure that operating systems files that are locked when a PC are running are in state where updating them is safe and won’t cause any issues. Restarting is also ideal when troubleshooting slow performances and clearing out errors within applications that could be causing them to crash.
Encountering issues on your PC? Is it slower than usual? Try Rebooting your PC and see if that helps. Most of the time a reboot helps with a lot of issues.
What does it mean to Shut down your PC? And when to do it
Shutting down means fully turning off your PC. Stops your PC programs and operating systems and should stop using power.
Shutting down your PC is ideal when you need to have your PC off for long periods of time. This also ensures that your PC is no longer using consuming power and fully turns off your PC. This is also ideal when you are traveling or going on vacation. If your using a laptop is best to also shutdown when traveling, especially if you plan on packing it in your bag. This ensure it doesn’t overheat or put strain on the battery. However, Shutting Down has changed with newer Windows Operating system. What does that mean for you?
Shutdown isn’t Shutting Down Anymore.
We used to be able to shutdown your PC and be confident that our PC was fully off, but now that isn’t the case. With Window’s new feature called “Fast Startup” (that’s enabled by default by the way). Don’t believe us? Go check for yourself. This new mode is part of Windows push to keep PCs always online. This mode does have its benefits which it improves your startup time because it saves your user profile into a hibernation file instead of fully clearing it so your profile loads quicker. However, when replacing components on your PC or when you need to ensure systems gets cleared to fully update a shutdown with this setting enable doesn’t do what it used to which makes a reboot better since it actually clears your cache and ensures you start fresh.
Microsoft has actually also admitted that this setting can cause issues when installing critical Windows updates which is why we always recommend to Restart/Reboot your PC once a week.
If you are unsure if this setting is enabled or how to check or need help navigating all these new changes in the technology we use every day, rest assured CMHWorks is here to help and to make technology easy again.
