Should i leave my computer switched on?

Question

Dell E521 home computer,sometimes have problems when start up,slow,unresponsive.

Answer 1

heck no!

Answer 2

It used to be that hard drives would wear out faster during startup and shutdown because they got used a whole lot. That is not the case anymore. All studies I've seen within the last 5 years show it's no more healthy to leave your PC on or off when it's not in use.

As far as power consumption is concerned, yes it may use a lot. But you can configure it to turn off the monitor, hard drive and other components after it's not been used for say maybe an hour and then it doesn't use much power.

I personally leave it on, if it's running XP it should be fine.

Answer 3

One reason why you might want to turn it off is economic. A typical PC consumes something like 300 watts. Let's assume that you use your PC for four hours every day, so the other 20 hours it is on would be wasted energy. If electricity costs 10 cents per kilowatt-hour in your area, then that 20 hours represents 60 cents a day. Sixty cents a day adds up to $219 per year.

It's possible to use the energy-saving features build into modern machines and cut that figure in half. For example, you can have the monitor and hard disk power down automatically when not in use. You'll still be wasting $100 per year.

The argument for leaving your computer on all the time is that turning it on and off somehow stresses the computer's components. For example, when the CPU chip is running, it can get quite hot, and when you turn the machine off it cools back down. The expansion and contraction from the heat probably has some effect on the solder joints holding the chip in place, and on the micro-fine details on the chip itself. But here are three ways to look at that:

If it were a significant problem, then machines would be failing all the time. In fact, hardware is very reliable (software is a whole different story, and there is a lot to be said for rebooting every day).
I don't know a single person who leaves the TV on 24 hours a day. TVs contain many of the same components that computers do. TVs certainly have no problems being cycled on and off.
Most vendors will sell you a three-year full-replacement warrantee for about $150. If you are worried about it, spend some of the money you are saving by turning your machine off and buy a service contract. Over three years, you come out way ahead!

Answer 4

Personally, I turn mine off when I've finished at the end of the day - mostly because I begrudge paying for the electricity. And it's another fire hazard removed during the night.

Turning to your sluggish startup, I'd run a good anti-virus such as AVG and a good anti-malware such as Ad-Aware SE Personal, both free to download.

If that doesn't help, go to Start - Run & type in "msconfig" without the quotes, OK then select the Startup tab. That lists everything that runs on startup, you'll probably recognise several that don't need to be there and you can prevent this by deselecting.

Hope that helps.

Answer 5

Check your startup programs. Run task manager and see how much free RAM you have. Also check the processor usage. Too many programs that startup in the bottom right hand corner can do that. Also run disk defragmentor and disk cleanup. Also run AVG Anti-Virus and AVG Anti-Spyware. Both are free and work great. Also run Ccleaner. After you do all that if that don't help try upgrading the RAM or get a faster hard drive like a 10,000 RPM SATA HDD. Or get 1GB of RAM or 2GB of RAM. I had the same problem with a laptop i got given to me and now it is working better than ever. Set it to hibernate or standby maybe but if you do what I said that should help also.

Answer 6

It will have even more problems if you leave it on all the time. Computers running Microsoft Windows should be restarted at least once a week. This clears out any memory that has been reserved by applications and then forgotten about.

It also uses power at night, which is a waste and bad for the planet, so it is better to turn it off.

Answer 7

Leaving it on probably extends its life - the internal components suffer more stress from the heating (when switching on) and then cooling down (when swicthing off). If left on, the components will stay at a more or less constant temperature and will therefore avoid the negative effects of the heating/cooling process.

It will not reduce the life of your hard drive if you set your hard drive to hibernate after, say, 20 minutes of non-use.

Of course, you will use more electricty by leaving it on.

Answer 8

As already suggested I would try and resolve the problem first. If you would still like a fast startup time use standby in S3 mode (if your motherboard supports it). This shuts everything down but keeps a small charge (about 5 watts) to your RAM to preserve everything in memory. I use this for my media PC and it starts up in about 5 seconds

Answer 9

Shutting your computer down everyday does decrease the life of components, I leave mine on weeks at a time and when not just hibernate.
Make sure your pc is well ventilated.

Answer 10

I put mt dell laptop computer on hibernate stand by Just press shift key and stand by to geather .until you want to switch on again It will restart quicker.

Answer 11

If its slow, then shutting down at night is good practice, it will cloear down the memory and it should perform at its best at start up. I would check your start up programs, there may be stuff running in the background you aren't aware of. A good clean to check for spyware or viruses and a disk check would probably be a good idea.