Have you restarted your computer?

Have you restarted your computer?

The dreaded question that IT ask when you contact them with a problem.   Can be very frustrating especially when your busy and don’t want to restart your computer. We do understand :-)

However contrary to the belief that IT Helpdesk are spawn of the devil and just want to inflict more pain and frustration on people with issues.

There is a very good reason for us asking you to restart.

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• It’s our job to get you up and running again ASAP and 80% of the time restarting will cure the problem. 
• It can cure a multitude of issues very quickly.
• It’s also one of the 1st things we will want to do if we look at your computer. Obviously if you’ve restarted and it doesn’t fix it then we need to know about it so we can investigate.
• 80% is good odds so why wouldn’t you do it? The possibility is you’ll be up and running again in about 10mins, against maybe waiting for an hour+ for someone from Helpdesk to look at it …..it’s a no brainer.

So why does it work?

1.       Over time your operating system gathers “leftover” digital junk, such as page files, temp files intermittently used by running applications, disk caches, open file descriptors, Zombie Processes, memory leaks, and other mess that hangs around even after you have closed the apps that created them, for days or weeks, until you restart your system.

a.      Tech Lingo Explained:

                                                               i.      Zombie Process is a defunct computer process that has completed execution but still has an entry in the process table.

                                                             ii.      Memory Leak A type of resource leak when a computer program mismanages memory allocations – can eat up your system’s resources. In such case restarting your machine clears out the Memory and gets everything back to working order.

2.       When this type of junk builds up in your computer your system performance is impacted and it starts to slow down your entire system. Over time it will eventually lead to your machine freezing/locking up. This can also lead to driver crashes or software malfunctions, causing issues with your network connectivity.

3.       Most important reason to restart your computer: Cybersecurity! The security patches, system, and application updates cannot be applied unless and until you restart. Both security and feature patches are meant to fix or improve your system’s and your software’s performance. Cybercriminals are able to create and implement zero-day vulnerability exploits in less than 24 hours, so if your security patches and feature updates have not been installed and “activated” by a restart, your system can be compromised at any time.

a.       So don’t put off windows updates.

b.      A restart means a proper windows restart. Do not shut down by holding power button, you will potentially cause more problems…. unless advised by IT Helpdesk.

c.       Tech Lingo Explained: 

A zero-day vulnerability is a software security flaw that is known to the software vendor but doesn’t have a patch in place to fix the flaw. It has the potential to be exploited by cybercriminals.