Does forcefully shutting down a computer do anything bad?

Question

You know when you pull out the power cord on a computer or if you hold down the power button, does it do anything bad, besides maybe loosing anything you did since the last shutdown

I know it's bad >.> i just wanted to know what could happen besides memory loss or something loss...

Answer 1

Fragments the harddrive and it can cause other issues with the installed software/OS. It is possible, though I feel unlikely, you could do damage to the hardware components as you do not let them properly power down. If you yanked the cord everytime you'd probably find out for sure but I've had numerous systems over the years and had to unplug several many times when they froze up etc none blew up.

Answer 2

Yes it can do. If the hard drive was in the middle of a read/write operation at the precise instant power goes off, the head can crash against the platter, causing some data corruption and possibly a bad sector to appear on the drive. How bad that will be will depend on what the drive was reading. In the case of NTFS under Windows XP for example, if the drive was reading a Master File Table (MFT) then things can get pretty ugly with the operating system being affected.

Not a huge chance that anything bad will happen, but it is certainly possible. Not a good thing to do if you can avoid it.

Answer 3

If you are using FAT32 then yes it can cause major problems

under NTFS you will lose changes that haven't saved
by a normal shutdown
mostly applications still running that write data to the HD

it isn't recommended that you shut down Windows
in this fashion but some times
Explorer.exe get locked up and the computer seems frozen

hit CTRL ALT DEL and wait for the taskmanager to popup
this could take 10-20 mins if the problem is severe
then shutdown EXPLORER.exe process
from the task manager use FILE new and type in
explorer.exe to run new process
once the Startbar reappears shutdown the PC normally

SPYWARE and Viruses can cause this condition
Time to scan your PC

Answer 4

It's not a good idea to do that, even though computer hard drives are more robust, you can still end up losing or corrupting data. Sometimes lost data is more costly than replacing hardware.

This used to be more a problem with linux, where a forced shutdown totally hoses the system to the point where it won't boot. Now though it's a little more forgiving, I'd avoid it at all costs.

Answer 5

It can, doesn't mean it will.
Electronics are complex pieces of hardware. When you go to shut down your operating system (windows) it does a lot of things in the background to prepare the computer for the next start up. Some of these things are clearing caches, reseting the hard drive spindle, saving important session data, and "politely" shutting down running applications. Where things can go wrong is if the system is trying to save important information to the hard drive and it doesn't make it which causes corrupted data and possible issues. Or a piece of hardware (network / modem card) may not shut down correctly causing future issues. These things don't normally happen since their are SOME safeguards to prevent horrible things from happening but they aren't 100% fullproof.

Answer 6

Generally speaking, this isn't a good idea. Windows uses disk caching to improve performance. This means that it waits until there's quite a bit of data to write to the disk, then does it all at once. If you just power it off, that data can easily be lost. While it's unlikely that it will hurt your computer, you can lose information easily.

If the computer happened to be writing to the boot record, it could force you to rebuild the hard drive, but this is a pretty rare occurance.

Answer 7

Most often not but it depends mostly on the computers periphials that were running and the state of the mother board and the fan on the cpu. Was the cpu at top load which is then at top temperature when the fan stopped or at idle which would give the cpu a better chance for cpu to disapate heat before it fried. Is this a parent who pulled his kids plug , spouse, or sibling , just curious.

Answer 8

well, no not really as long as you don't do it to often just shut down your comp regularly and if it's freezing horribly then use the power button though pulling the plug can sometimes corrupt the sound or hurt the memory it's a good idea not to do it often only on very rare times

Answer 9

Your power button may be defective. You can take it to your manufacturer, or some place that will repair it. If your PC is too old, take it to a computer junkie and ask them if they can fix it. But if your power supply is good, then it is not the power supply. It could also be poor power management of the computer. Try getting a new power cord as wall, but not before you try plugging your PC into another power outlet.

Answer 10

It will not blow up. It is however hard on the internal hardware of the machine. Not to mention Windows doesnt like it very much either. If done enough, it could shorten the lifespan of the hardware. And you are correct, you could lose unsaved work.