Rebooting, why it works.
So it never fails, you call tech support and the first thing they ask you to do is REBOOT, right?
Have you ever wondered why?
If so I’m here to give you a hopefully not too technical explanation of why techs ask you to do this.
So in order to explain this I need to give you a brief introduction on the basics of how and why computers work.
Hardware is the physical computer, the case, the power supply, the motherboard, the central processor chip, video card, hard drive, and ram. (Same for a phone or tablet.)
BIOS: Basic Input Output System: This is a tiny piece of software that lives in the hardware of the computer (generally a BIOS chip). This tells the computer what type of hardware to expect and where to look for the operating system.
Operating System: Is technically software but is really the interface that allows you to communicate with the hardware and software on your computer. Examples are Windows, Mac OS, iOS Android, Blackberry (seriously people still use those?)
Software is everything you use on a computer/tablet/phone: Word processor, spreadsheet, email, web browser, music player,
RAM: Random Access Memory, a computers short term memory, think of it as a chalk/white board only MUCH, MUCH, FASTER. (This is where a good portion of problems arise and I’ll explain why later.)
So here is what happens when you turn on your computer. (I am only listing the portions of the boot sequence relevant to this discussion.) The BIOS starts and says this computer has a hard drive (where your data is stored), checks the Master Boot Record on the Drive for the operating System.
The computer looks at the hard drive and then starts loading the operating system from the hard drive into RAM. Once the OS finishes there is always a portion of the OS living in RAM while a large part resides on the hard drive. However as part of the OS loading you will generally also load the following at startup, a virus scanner, a peripheral driver or software such as skype, a webcam, a scanner, a printer, etc. All of which load into RAM. (That white board is starting to fill up.)
So now you double click outlook or gmail to check your email.
The OS reads the program from the hard drive into RAM. Everything you do in the mail client first occurs in RAM before writing it to the hard drive.
Now, you start going about your work for the day and let us say you do a lot of internet research and you go through 15 web pages (all of which are being written to RAM). You also have Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Adobe Reader, Firefox and few other things open. Every time you make a change in one of these programs something is being written TO or READ FROM RAM!
Remember that whiteboard analogy?
Picture writing and erasing and re-writing over the whole white board with very small print, 30 times in 30 minutes. Think about how sometimes stuff doesn’t fully erase and what it looks like when something else over writes it. Now up this to about 10,000x per second and that is what goes on in RAM. The longer you leave your computer on the more problems are likely to occur because of how many times stuff is being written to and from the RAM.
Rebooting – is like taking a giant eraser to the whole board. It wipes everything off to give you a quick reset.
Shutting DOWN – Is like first erasing and then taking a wet rag and washing the board. It gives your RAM the cleanest Slate possible. Once in a while I have seen a shutdown fix a problem where a reboot would not. Most often a reboot is enough and is usually much faster.
And that ladies and gentleman is why you should periodically reboot your computer.
Have you ever wondered why?
If so I’m here to give you a hopefully not too technical explanation of why techs ask you to do this.
So in order to explain this I need to give you a brief introduction on the basics of how and why computers work.
Hardware is the physical computer, the case, the power supply, the motherboard, the central processor chip, video card, hard drive, and ram. (Same for a phone or tablet.)
BIOS: Basic Input Output System: This is a tiny piece of software that lives in the hardware of the computer (generally a BIOS chip). This tells the computer what type of hardware to expect and where to look for the operating system.
Operating System: Is technically software but is really the interface that allows you to communicate with the hardware and software on your computer. Examples are Windows, Mac OS, iOS Android, Blackberry (seriously people still use those?)
Software is everything you use on a computer/tablet/phone: Word processor, spreadsheet, email, web browser, music player,
RAM: Random Access Memory, a computers short term memory, think of it as a chalk/white board only MUCH, MUCH, FASTER. (This is where a good portion of problems arise and I’ll explain why later.)
So here is what happens when you turn on your computer. (I am only listing the portions of the boot sequence relevant to this discussion.) The BIOS starts and says this computer has a hard drive (where your data is stored), checks the Master Boot Record on the Drive for the operating System.
The computer looks at the hard drive and then starts loading the operating system from the hard drive into RAM. Once the OS finishes there is always a portion of the OS living in RAM while a large part resides on the hard drive. However as part of the OS loading you will generally also load the following at startup, a virus scanner, a peripheral driver or software such as skype, a webcam, a scanner, a printer, etc. All of which load into RAM. (That white board is starting to fill up.)
So now you double click outlook or gmail to check your email.
The OS reads the program from the hard drive into RAM. Everything you do in the mail client first occurs in RAM before writing it to the hard drive.
Now, you start going about your work for the day and let us say you do a lot of internet research and you go through 15 web pages (all of which are being written to RAM). You also have Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Adobe Reader, Firefox and few other things open. Every time you make a change in one of these programs something is being written TO or READ FROM RAM!
Remember that whiteboard analogy?
Picture writing and erasing and re-writing over the whole white board with very small print, 30 times in 30 minutes. Think about how sometimes stuff doesn’t fully erase and what it looks like when something else over writes it. Now up this to about 10,000x per second and that is what goes on in RAM. The longer you leave your computer on the more problems are likely to occur because of how many times stuff is being written to and from the RAM.
Rebooting – is like taking a giant eraser to the whole board. It wipes everything off to give you a quick reset.
Shutting DOWN – Is like first erasing and then taking a wet rag and washing the board. It gives your RAM the cleanest Slate possible. Once in a while I have seen a shutdown fix a problem where a reboot would not. Most often a reboot is enough and is usually much faster.
And that ladies and gentleman is why you should periodically reboot your computer.
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