Have You Tried Turning It Off and On Again?

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]Have you tried turning it off and on again?

[00:00:07]Hi everyone, Leo Notenboom here for askleo.com.

[00:00:10]Here's a question I honestly got some time ago.

[00:00:12]It seems like every time I call tech support line for my software, operating system, or even my broadband connection, the first thing out of the technician's mouth is reboot, or worse yet, power down for a while.

[00:00:24]What does that have to do with anything?

[00:00:27]And why does it work?

[00:00:29]It does kind of seem like magic, doesn't it?

[00:00:32]A computer's acting up, you reboot it, and poof, things are better again, at least for a while.

[00:00:38]It gets even weirder when you achieve the same effect just by powering it down and pulling the cord for a while.

[00:00:43]It's so well known that it's become a meme from a popular television show.

[00:00:47]Let's consider the magical mess that is software.

[00:00:52]Jerry Fouts was a friend and an expert in the design of power supplies.

[00:00:56]Many years ago, he provided an interesting write-up on unplugging the power as perhaps the single most effective electronics troubleshooting technique.

[00:01:06]The topic came up in a discussion when I recommended power cycling a router, unplugging it, waiting 30 seconds, and then plugging it back in as a way to resolve a connectivity problem.

[00:01:17]Electronic components can get into odd states, and as Jerry points out, power cycling forces the equipment to completely reset and restart from a known good state.

[00:01:31]Same's true for software.

[00:01:33]Software is incredibly complex these days, and it uses and touches lots and lots of different things on your computer.

[00:01:40]The longer it runs, the more it impacts.

[00:01:43]Memory is used, released, and fragmented.

[00:01:45]Programs open, read, and write local and temporary files to disk.

[00:01:49]And then there's the hardware— video cards, networking adapters, mice, keyboards, and other peripherals.

[00:01:55]All being accessed continuously.

[00:01:57]As a result, any of those, and perhaps all of them, can end up in states that cause problems.

[00:02:04]It shouldn't be that way, of course, and the inherent quality of the software and/or hardware plays a huge role.

[00:02:11]But the bottom line is it happens.

[00:02:14]Software can get confused over time, and those technicians who ask you to reboot your device, They do so because it works much more often than you might imagine.

[00:02:28]Power cycling restores all the hardware to a known state.

[00:02:31]A reboot restores all the software to a known state.

[00:02:35]Well, mostly known state.

[00:02:37]Temporary files, installed files, registry changes, and more are still going to remain, of course.

[00:02:42]That's why in extreme cases, a reformat and reinstall is a recommended solution.

[00:02:47]It returns even those things to a known state.

[00:02:51]The router problem that started this discussion?

[00:02:54]Well, like many devices these days, routers are really small single-purpose computers.

[00:02:59]They often run a variation of an operating system you've heard of: Linux.

[00:03:03]Their internal memory tracks a variety of information relating to the network connections they manage.

[00:03:09]The longer they run, the more likely it is that something will create a problem.

[00:03:13]It could be hardware-related, as explained in Jerry's article, or something in the software, like I've outlined above.

[00:03:20]In any case, I typically reboot my own router every few months.

[00:03:26]It's become a mantra in my household.

[00:03:29]When in doubt, reboot.

[00:03:32]It's truly surprising how many problems just go away when you do.

[00:03:39]For updates, for comments, for links related to this topic and more, visit askleo.com/2434.

[00:03:47]I'm Leo Notenboom, and this is askleo. com.

[00:03:51]Thanks for watching.