Why Does Restarting Work so Often? – The Basics

The video above and this blog were created as part of our The Basics series. The Basics is a series of videos answering questions that many have in the most understandable way. No industry specific terms or over detailed descriptions. We created this series to help people understand technology basics that are sometimes explained over complicatedly. It’d mean the world to us if you shared the video or this blog!

Anybody who’s ever had a problem with their technology will know the phrase “Have you tried turning it off and on again?”

But why?

The extremely simple answer is because computers aren’t perfect.

The reason restarting helps them is because they make little mistakes every now and again that build up and those mistakes slow things down and create issues elsewhere in your computer. The more they build up the more noticeable it becomes. By restarting the computer you’re resetting your operating system and all of your programs back to 0. This is why it’s often the first request of a tech support agent. A good portion of problems are solved this way.

If you can make it habit to restart your computer when something starts acting up before calling your tech support, you’ll be one of their favorites!

One last note, if you’re using a windows machine it’s important to select the restart option instead of the shutdown.

Why do I need to click restart instead of shut down?

It’s because Windows 10 likes to avoid actually shutting down your computer. When you click the shutdown button it puts it into a deep sleep rather than shutting down. It does this so that when you come back to your computer to start working again it can start up faster. If you click the restart button it turns everything down and makes sure that everything has actually been restarted before it turns back on. Shutting down won’t solve your problem but restarting just might!