When To Shutdown Or Reboot

I have been asked many times when is it best to shut down my computer. In all honesty this really depends on the type of system you have be it a desktop, server, or laptop and the Operating System you have on your computer.

Laptops - It is best to shut down a laptop any time it is not going to be used. Laptops are designed to be mobile and to be used as needed when needed and do not like running long periods of time however heed this warning. The Microsoft Windows operating system does not like being shut down and started up all the time and make sure you use windows to shut down your system properly or you will corrupt the operating system. You can reboot the system any time you need to and if it has been running for a while and is getting slow a reboot will usually help this issue.

Desktops - Most desktop system do not like being turned on and off all the time and are designed to set and run. When you shut down the system and start it back up it actually sends a surge through the components to fire up all the hardware and the system does not like doing this all the time. It is best to leave your system on all day and only shut it completely down when you are going to bed and the system will not be used again for many hours. If you can leave it running I would recommend leaving it on and running as long as possible rather then shutting it down. I turn my system off 1 day every month just to give it a bit of a rest but not surge it all the time starting it up. That one day is also when I break it down the clean out the dust. As for reboots, if the system is lagging or running slow it is fine to reboot the system any time needed as it does not power down. Heed this warning the Microsoft Windows operating system does not like running for extremely long time spans so a reboot when needed or a couple of times a week will not hurt a thing.

Servers - Servers are designed to run continuous and should unless maintenance is being performed. Again even the Microsoft Server Operating System does not like running super long periods of time and will cause services or socket errors on the server. You will have to reboot it from time to time to get all the services back up and keep the system running optimal.

The Best Thing For Your PC

Many people wonder what the best thing they can do for their PC is. Honestly to keep your computer running well and continually running well for as long as possible you have to do maintenance on the PC just as you would any other machine. Your computer's worst enemy is Dust and air born contaminants as they are sucked into the system and drawn to it on a daily basis. Your computer's internal components run entirely on DC voltage that is converted by the Power Supply in the system. All these components including the power supply can will and do attract dust. The dust will short across components and can cause the component to fry. Also your heat sinks for the processor, chip sets, and RAM all will build up dust as well restricting air flow. I highly recommend that you get a can of compressed air (Duster) or if you have a compressor that has a way to not build up internal moisture and blow out the entire system making sure to blow all the dust off all electronic boards, heat sinks, and even the inside of the power supply. You really want to make sure the system is off and unplugged for this as well.

Your operating system and file system which controls everything to  the computer requires maintenance and protection as well. The system has files that track configuration settings and file locations of everything on the system call the system REGISTRY. This file will end up cluttered over time due to install and removal of programs and files. The Registry needs cleaned with special software from time to time. Also just from being turned on and ran files can become fragmented on the hard drive. A fragmented file is a file that parts and pieces are scattered all over various portions of the hard drive and causes the hard drive with mechanical heads to have to scan back and forth over much more of the drive. Defragmenting the file system forces the drive to put all the pieces of the file in order where all the data it must read is right there.

For protection you just need a good antivirus, AntiMalware/AntiSpyware software, and probably a firewall.

It is recommended that you clean the dust from your system once a month or one sever two months and you maintain your operating system at least once a month for optimal performance and longest life of your system.

Sadly computers are electronic devices like light bulbs and just like light bulbs any time your PC can just quite be it a component went out on the system or something inevitably failed. Maintenance helps as much as possible to prolong the life of these components but will not stop failure.

Official Brownell's It Solutions Blog

We officially have a Tech Blog where we will post our opinions and advice for PC users about various IT topics.