Is it harmful to turn your computer off using the glowing blue on/off button on the front of the CPU?
In the 90’s our IT guy told us that doing that will eventually wreck your hard drive. He said I needed to use the controls and let it shut down in its own time. However, the other day my husband said he talked to a local tech (which we seem to have a plethora of now) who said it won’t hurt it.
Which is true? Or have the systems changed so much that it used to hurt it but now it doesn’t?
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I would never just kill it with the switch unless it was totally frozen. I agree with the old guy. There is a reason it takes a little bit of time to shutdown. It needs to clean stuff up.
Pushing the power button on most new PCs is OK, it initiates a proper shutdown just like choosing Start->Shutdown. Or it puts the computer to sleep.
To kill it old style, when the machine is frozen, you hold down the button five or ten seconds
@jaytkay I just pull the cord when my computer freezes and it works fine…only don’t do it when its backing up or updating
If you hold down the power button for four seconds to turn it off, it should be because there is already a problem. It can be a good thing, because it triggers disc checking processes when you start it up again to see what the error was. Otherwise don’t do it, because there is always a chance it will interrupt data transfer processes and corrupt some of your data. The system shut down sequence is there for a reason.
Yes. On my Mac, I sometimes use the button (which is on the right of my keyboard), to initiate the shutdown process or just because stuff isn’t working properly. I imagine that’s true for most new computers.
On the old ones, I’m not sure if its harmful, but I know it hasn’t done anything to mine…
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