Does shutting turning off your computer without going to shutdown damage the system?

Answer 1

Potentially yes, usually no. In order to speed up response time, when something is written to disk the actual write is not performed, but instead it is cached in memory, and when the memory fills up, there is idle time, or a timer expires all waiting writes are executed at once. If power is suddenly shut down the computer would not have had time to perform the writes in the buffer, so they would be lost. Old OSs (for instance, DOS) did not do this, and so could be shut down. Virtually all modern ones do.

Often there are no writes pending, so there is no problem. Or, pending writes may not affect the state of the machine after boot (application temporary files). But yes, if power loss occurs before an important file is written it can damage your system. It is best to shutdown as recommended.

UNIX has the "sync" command to sync the disk. If you need to power down a UNIX system you first type the command "sync" twice and then it is *almost* safe to power down.

Answer 2

In reality,no it doesn't normally damage the computer to do this however you can lose some information from running processes. Normally, it won't hurt a thing, but I am wondering this: why do you want to shut down like this? Usually one turns off the comp. using the switch, when the comp. hangs or gives a problem shutting down normally. Just a warning here. If you have to shut the comp. down with the switch cause it has a problem going on then don't be surprised if you try to re-start it one day and it just stays dead! This isn't because of the process of shutting down, this is because you failed to fix something to start with. Often problems like this are due to alot of spyware and/or viruses. Fix the problem and leave the switch alone! Its a bad crutch. Thanks, J

Answer 3

I'm assuming you mean if it is bad to hit the power button before the system has had a chance to shut itself down. the answer is yes, ideally you should let the system shut down on its own. it is storing things in memory basically- you can lose information if you shut it down without letting it shut itself off.

Answer 4

it is undesirable on your laptop. how undesirable is the question. properly it does not enable all techniques to end (a lot of which you dont understand approximately coz there variety of hidden) and therefor once you reboot, your laptop could have concern commencing coz archives wont be the place they have been predicted to be. by using ending particular techniques by using rigidity you additionally could make a large number of the laptop because it could have been a million/2 way by using somthing, and then while its rebooted it cant remember that it became doing that technique yet while it trys to do it lower back it may discover that its already completed mutually as in actuality its ony a million/2 completed. to confirm the techniques in simple terms hit: ctrl alt delete, and while the activity supervisor opens hit the techniques tab.

Answer 5

Yes, an example. An elderly lady had her electric go off and come on, she rebooted and it ran Scan Disk and booted up. Then the electric go off again. She rebooted and it said operating system not found. I had to reload her software.

Answer 6

Yes.

If something is being moved on the hard drive(which happens constantly) and you turn it off during that time then that data could be gone... such as your documents and/or operating system files.

Answer 7

It can... it is always better to shut it down via Start/Shutdown

Answer 8

it can do physical damage to your hard drive.
unless there is no other alternative, always shut down from the menu not with the power button.

Answer 9

yes it'll damage your hard-disk as the read and write arm doesn't return to it's original place when shutting down.

Answer 10

There is the potential of lost data; and open files being lost without being saved.