What is it about turning a device off then on again that allows it to work?
In: 3
Things can get in an unknown bad state. By turning them off and then on again, they get back in a known good state.
If it’s something with computer memory, then powering it down and powering it back up clears the memory and essentially allows it to reload whatever firmware it uses. As the program runs, small errors happen, and those can compound until it fails. Turning it off, clears that memory and turning it on again allows for a fresh reload of whatever instructions the device is using.
A program freezes when something unexpected happens.
For instance, you could ask a robot to broom sweep the room. It goes to storage to grab the broom but the broom has been moved elsewhere then it just stays there waiting for the broom to show up.
When you shut it down and restarts, it goes back to the station and as long as you don’t tell it to go find the broom again, it doesn’t get stuck.
When it comes to computing devices it’s memory usage.
In order for your device to run things quickly, when you open new apps etc, they get loaded into memory for fast use. The more things opened means more memory taken. When the memory is full, the device slows down and can start throwing errors. Rebooting a device will clear the memory and start fresh.
As time has progressed we have been given the ability to fully close programs running in memory (or running in the background if you will). But to be fair, it’s easier to just tell you to turn it off and on again.
Just like with humans, sometimes it’s easier to start fresh than to fix an existing problem. Off/on is starting fresh.
There are tons of little applications that run in the background on all OSes. Services on Windows, daemons on Unix/macOS. This is true for phones and tablets, too, as those run a variant of Unix as well (iOS/iPadOS/AndroidOS). Restarting the computer or device will make sure all of those background apps restart, too.
This is why I tell my wife to restart her phone when she stops getting new mail. She’ll go literally months between restarts and something’s bound to stop responding or get hung.
The majority of technical problems you will come across are just the program memory (RAM) getting into a jumbled mess because of a bug. By restarting the computer, you wipe the RAM and give it a fresh chance to avoid the bug by doing something different this go around.
I’ve read this elsewhere before:
Let’s say you started from home and we’re on your way to someplace but lost your way inside a complex maze that you don’t know how to get out of. If you had a magical switch that would “take you back home”, you would know how to not get lost again.
That’s what turning something off would do, it’ll take you back home where you began.
Latest Answers