How to Properly Reboot Your Computer

Rebooting your computer is the most common first-step remedy for most PC ailments.  Rebooting returns all of your computer’s software (and hardware) to a known initial state, which in theory should eliminate fluctuating problems.  The issue could be as simple as a software error or as complex as a motherboard or hard drive failure, but you really can’t narrow down the options until you try a few things.

Since you have to take a logical scientific approach to identify the true source of your computer’s problems, you should really eliminate all “unknowns” that could possibly exist when trying to get your computer back to a previous “known” state.  For example, there could be some hardware that is “stuck” that causes a Blue Screen of Death, and it won’t fix itself until the card is powered down (i.e. a hard reboot)… all the soft reboots in the world will not fix the problem.

There’s always going to be some weird problem with your computer from time to time.  Sometimes it’s a combination of hardware that just doesn’t like each other, old chipsets, immature drivers, or a bad power supply.  Here are some guidelines that should help you get to the root of the problem without pulling your hair (or your PC’s parts) out.

Shut down EVERYTHING

This means turning off all peripherals that have a dedicated power source.  Printers, powered USB hubs, speakers, and even external drives.  It has happened on occassion that the motherboard’s BIOS wanted to boot from an external drive that didn’t have any boot information.  It’s also possible that an external device can’t initialize, which could cause a hang, BSOD or other error.

Shut down the computer

This doesn’t mean sleep mode or a soft reboot.  Your computer should be completely dead to make sure there aren’t any lingering problems.  Most computers today have an ATX power supply, which means that there’s a little trickle of electricity to your motherboard so it can detect when the power button is pressed.  Some motherboards even have an LED on them to let you know that the motherboard is receiving some power.

The only way to make sure there is ZERO power going to your computer is to unplug the power cord… Don’t just unplug the cord from the wall, unplug it at the power supply.  In a fit of panic you may forget that you have a UPS powerstrip, so unplugging the cord from the wall just trips the UPS’s battery on.

You may have to wait a few seconds before power is completely exhausted.  You may have heard the tech support guy from India state that “you need to wait 30 seconds before you turn your computer on”, and there is some truth to this.  The large capacitors inside your PC’s power supply store electricity (which is why it’s dangerous to touch them even when the power is off), and they can take some time to discharge.  Thirty seconds may be a little excessive, though… my motherboard’s LED usually goes out within 5 seconds.

Make sure you unplug all cords for all external devices.  Just to be safe, only have your PC and monitor plugged in if you find yourself in this hardcore “elimination” mode.

You need to determine what the problem is, and if the problem is a failing drive then having all of your devices hooked up isn’t going to help.  To narrow things down, leave only the primary bootable hard drive connected.  You should disconnect the data cables AND power cables to all hard drives, optical drives, card readers, and any other drive-like device… unplugging the power only may make the computer hang as it tries to initialize a “dead” device.

Remove any PC cards that aren’t absolutely necessary.  This includes sound cards, network cards, video capture devices and extra video cards.  If you are using devices included with your motherboard (such as on-board sound), then disable these in the BIOS.  Also remove all but 1 stick of RAM, to eliminate the possibility of faulty RAM or DIMM slot.

Bringing your system back up

Don’t just go willy-nilly and power everything up… you should go at it like the astronauts on Apollo 13.  Turn on devices as you need them, and don’t turn on anything you don’t need until you’ve found the problem.

Turn on your external peripherals first (printers, external drives, etc).  Wait for them to complete any initialization they may need, which is usually a few minutes.  I’d recommend just unplugging external devices while troubleshooting an internal computer problem, but this is a good step if you’re troubleshooting a problem with the device itself.

Plug in your computer and monitor’s power.  Press your computer’s power button.  If everything comes up properly, then you can power down and slowly begin to add devices back into your system, one by one.  Don’t slap everything back into your computer.  Try putting all of your memory back in, and see if your computer boots properly.  If it doesn’t then you can determine which stick (or slot) is causing the problem.  If your memory is fine, then begin putting your PCI cards back in, check for a good boot, and continue the process until you’ve found the problem.

It is possible that there isn’t any hardware problem at all, but a software one.  If you have any version of Windows since XP then you can restore a snapshot of your system.  Keep going back in time and see if the problem goes away.   If this doesn’t help, then you may need to reinstall the OS.

Hopefully by following these steps you can eliminate your intermittent computer problems.  If this procedure doesnt’ immediately rectify the situation, this is the methodology you should use to narrow down what exactly your computer problems are.