It’s the age-old joke that will plague IT Support to the end of time.
"Have you tried turning your machine on and off again?"
Hey, sometimes we even mix it up a bit – “Can you reboot?”, “Try powering down the machine” etc etc.
It means the same thing, and honestly, it isn’t lazy advice. There is real logic and value to this simple act.
So why does it work? Put simply, electronic devices are state based machines. They start in one state, and proceed from there, building in stages from one state to the next. Programmes are the same, and your computer’s software will be running many simultaneously. If one of these programmes has a bug, or there are conflicting commands running simultaneously, you can find yourself on the phone to IT Support (or tempted to throw the machine out of the window, which we don’t recommend by the way).
Powering down your machine (and yes, sometimes this might involve physically removing the plug and allowing the machine to fully deplete its power) enables what is essentially a reinitialization of the device and a return to its original state.
Of course, it may not fix the original problem, which is why we are always on call to investigate if a reboot doesn’t resolve the situation. It’s easier and faster to start from a clean state than identify and fix any problems that may be occurring — in fact, in some cases, it may be impossible to fix problems without beginning from that clean state. As a time-effective and logical first step, a simple reboot is a great solution.