Restarting Your PC 101

Why is restarting your PC so important?

If I had a nickel every time a client said to me “I don’t have time to restart my PC”, I’d be a millionaire! It’s amazing to me that people “don’t have time” to restart their PC, but they have time to argue about it, LOL!

In my 20+ working as an IT Professional, from L1 help desking to L4 SysAdmin, Technical Writer & Programmer, I’ve had thousands of interactions with clients reporting issues with hardware, software, network and systems. No matter the source, whenever an issue appears, part of the troubleshooting methodology is to bring the PC/server to a good baseline. This means to restore the PC as closely as possible to the best-known working order. And the quickest and easiest way to do this is to restart the device.

Restarting your PC on a regular basis keeps your PC running top notch, applies updates, and allows internal systems to perform auto repairs as needed.

Waiting to restart your PC may seem like it’s saving time, but what ends up happening is it stacks updates in a queue. Eventually there will be a critical update in queue that if it’s stuck behind a bunch of other updates, may prevent the PC from getting online to download appropriate files. I call this the “Winnie The Pooh” effect. Similar to Winnie The Pooh stuck in Rabbit’s house door, no one can get in or out until Winnie The Pooh is extracted.

Don’t allow your PC to become like Winnie The Pooh! Keeping your PC up to date and rebooted on a regular basis will ensure your PC runs at best performance with the most update security patches. Your PC will thank you! 🤓

For a deeper dive into this important subject, check out Restarting Your PC 201: The reason why it's important. This deeper dive tells the why, the how and what happens internally on your PC when you restart your PC.