how often do you restart your computer?

I've got a 2-1/2 year old xp laptop with essentially no battery life left in it, so I usually put it in hibernate mode each evening and unplug. Occasionally I'll give it a full shut down if things start going dodgy.

For the 2 years I was living in Ireland and would get a "memory parity error" blue screen of death about 3 or 4 times a week. Since I've moved back to the States this hasn't happened at all. wierd.

My current problem is with a corrupt recycle bin, it always works fine on a fresh startup but after a while it acquires these phantom hidden/system files with a "dc" prefix that can't be deleted. Surprisingly I haven't been able to find a solution on the internets that actually works.

I subscribe to the never turn it off camp. To date, I have never had a computer completely die on me. I've had a few minor problems over the years, like bad RAM chips or a burnt out modem, but most of the machines I've purchased dating back to 1995 still run. One of those machines, a 350 mhz pII, is still running to this day and has probably only been turned off for a total of 30 days in the last decade (NEC was the shit!). My personal opinion on this is regularly powering on and off your machine wares out the components in the same way turning on and off a lightbulb does. I'm probably full of shit but, unlike many of my friends who insist on shutdown of there system every night, I have never lost a motherboard, HD or CPU.

As far as restarting, I give it a good reboot before working on a system intensive project or when updates require me to.

My old amd xp 1300+ became a lot more stable after some timing tweakings, it now runs at 1500(+). Also, i had to swap some dimms in there since they had gone a bit woopy. It's running 7 quite smoothly, much better than i expected, with 1 gig of ram.

It's become unusable for audio though, i keep getting glitches even when simply recording stereo 44kHz. Probably it's the m-audio drivers. They tend to be slightly sloppy sometimes. Or maybe i overlooked something.

I reboot it often while installing os'es, otherwise not at all. edit: it's off at night.

My t40 (1.3 ghz intel m) is another story, it's rock stable on XP, i only reboot when my midi driver needs restarting. I could probably also just stop and restart the driver, but i'm too lazy to find out how.

*looks for nerdiest looking emoticon

I use to shut down at night or restart often but that was a long time ago and I've since become a slave to my torrent list and trying to use up my off peak (2am to 8am for non-Australians) download before my on peak. I'm only ever using Firefox, utorrent and msn and rarely anything else so if my computer was taking a performance hit, it takes two or three youtube tabs or videos on screen to actually be noticable.

My computer is in my bedroom and for a while I can't help but think that is contributing to more dust in here that combined with the door closed is being concentrated and I'm inhaling it at night

2 words: Chip Creak.

  On 2/18/2010 at 2:20 AM, Ego said:

Firefox has always been a memory mess. But I don't think Firefox actually "leaks" these days. It's just not good at releasing memory. When I go from 50 to 5 tabs the memory usage hardly drops.

just as a heads up that's basically what a memory leak is. it's when a program consumes memory without properly freeing it, leaving it orphaned. anything written in java (presumably jdownloader?) uses java's built in garbage collector to free up memory so, upon exiting, you should be all set. on any windows system, i reboot once every two days or so. on linux based systems (including mac os x) you get a lot more leniency. just go based on your power consumption desires!

about 3 times a month

  On 2/18/2010 at 1:54 PM, feltcher said:

  On 2/18/2010 at 2:19 AM, JohnTqs said:

i turn off my computer at night to save the world

 

Me too. And save on my electric bills.

 

Mine crashed about 5 times last night as I was trying to get a sodding MPD16 to work through my USB-midi converter. Sorted it now though. Seems to be a general problem with windows and the device.

You aint saving much to be honest. If youve got an electric shower and you spend and extra 60 seconds in it, you've put a hole night of computer being on back on your bill.

  On 2/19/2010 at 12:23 AM, chassis said:

You aint saving much to be honest. If youve got an electric shower and you spend and extra 60 seconds in it, you've put a hole night of computer being on back on your bill.

that sounds super dangerous

  On 2/19/2010 at 1:57 AM, bigs said:

  On 2/19/2010 at 12:23 AM, chassis said:

You aint saving much to be honest. If youve got an electric shower and you spend and extra 60 seconds in it, you've put a hole night of computer being on back on your bill.

that sounds super dangerous

lol yeah, ive got one and whenever i use it i have to earth myself be putting a metal pole up my bumbum and put a clamp on the end of my willy and plug it into the mains

Cheap heat sinks:

  On 2/19/2010 at 9:21 PM, EDGEY said:

Cheap heat sinks:

 

lol

  On 2/19/2010 at 12:23 AM, chassis said:

  On 2/18/2010 at 1:54 PM, feltcher said:

  On 2/18/2010 at 2:19 AM, JohnTqs said:

i turn off my computer at night to save the world

 

Me too. And save on my electric bills.

 

Mine crashed about 5 times last night as I was trying to get a sodding MPD16 to work through my USB-midi converter. Sorted it now though. Seems to be a general problem with windows and the device.

You aint saving much to be honest. If youve got an electric shower and you spend and extra 60 seconds in it, you've put a hole night of computer being on back on your bill.

so by turning off my computer each night i save 6 hours worth of shower time a year? that's sounds like a lot to me

  On 2/20/2010 at 4:27 PM, JohnTqs said:

  On 2/19/2010 at 12:23 AM, chassis said:

  On 2/18/2010 at 1:54 PM, feltcher said:

  On 2/18/2010 at 2:19 AM, JohnTqs said:

i turn off my computer at night to save the world

 

Me too. And save on my electric bills.

 

Mine crashed about 5 times last night as I was trying to get a sodding MPD16 to work through my USB-midi converter. Sorted it now though. Seems to be a general problem with windows and the device.

You aint saving much to be honest. If youve got an electric shower and you spend and extra 60 seconds in it, you've put a hole night of computer being on back on your bill.

 

so by turning off my computer each night i save 6 hours worth of shower time a year? that's sounds like a lot to me

I wasnt being very accurate but maybe IDK. Im just saying a computer on stand-by isnt very high on the league of power guzzlers. But I suppose it would help.