What Happens If You Don't Shut Down Your Computer Properly?
Techquickie
·Techquickie
·2018-05-06
·
954 words · ~4 min read
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thanks for watching Techquickie click the subscribe button then enable
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notifications with the Bell icon so you won't miss any future videos turning
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something off is usually pretty simple rotate the key flick the switch or burp
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the garlic pizza you just ate directly into the face of your hot date but for
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some reason turning off your computer is this complicated ordeal I mean arguably
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it isn't difficult to click start then
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shut down or just tap the button on your
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chassis but instead of turning off instantly your PC always goes through
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some kind of rigmarole that can last for minutes before it finally powers down
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well hold on a minute Linus why can't I
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just hold the button for five seconds or flip the switch at the back to force an
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instant shutdown well it turns out that
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there is a method to the madness you see
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when you click that shutdown button your
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computer goes through a series of steps that are primarily designed to protect
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your data killing the power abruptly
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while you have unsaved work on your screen means that that work is probably
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lost for good and even though some modern programs have autosave features
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they are far from perfect so one of the
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delays you might encounter is the PC prompting you to save anything that you
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might have open like a Word document or an image that you're editing but there
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are also less evident things going on in the background chief among these is that
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your operating system sends signals to running programs and services that it's
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time to power down so it tells these
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programs to wrap up whatever it is they're doing kind of like a parent
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trying to get their hyperactive kids to lie down for the evening this is
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important because these programs and services may be in the middle of writing
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data to your disk and this could be anything from a program update to a file
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download to a registry key being modified so there's a common theme here
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then you the very real risk of data
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corruption if you just power off your computer without warning it's a little
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bit like yanking a cake out of the oven before checking if it's done just like
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that cake might not be anything that you'd want to eat the half-written data
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might not be anything that your computer can actually use and because of the way
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that some computer drives and file systems work you can learn more about
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those up here you might not only corrupt whatever data was being written at the
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time of power down you might also damage other files that are in a cache or a
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nearby physical location on your device
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fortunately the file system used by modern versions of Windows called NTFS
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has a feature called journaling essentially that means that it keeps a
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log of data changes to reduce the risk of corruption however problems can still
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occur if you don't shut your computer off properly hence the disk check
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messages that you sometimes get when powering your system back on after a
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power outage or similar bringing us to
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one of the biggest reasons that people force a system reset system updates that
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seemed to take an eternity when you just need to wrap up some work
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and go to sleep well there is a reason
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that your screen explicitly tells you not to turn off the power during a
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typical power loss you're likely to lose a little bit of unsaved work but turning
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off your PC during an update can result
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in problems that will prevent the system from even booting backup such as
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corrupted half-written registry files or system files so I would even suggest
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that plugging your computer into a UPS or making sure that you have a fully
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charged laptop battery during updates isn't a bad idea
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basically the moral of the story is that unless your computer is hopelessly
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frozen and you have no choice but to completely kill the power make sure you
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turn your system off properly it may take a little more time but trust me
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it's a lot easier than having to reinstall Windows or try to recover a
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savegame that you've dumped 500 hours into
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really that's funny Dennis do you think that's funny you often find
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yourself trying to control two computers at once and getting confused like which
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so thanks for watching guys if you disliked you can hit that button but if
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leave a comment with video suggestions subscribe I started doing the LTTE intro
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well whatever it doesn't really matter