How often do you power down?

[bilzmale]

I tend to leave my PC running 24/7 except for reboots on new installs. I power down the monitor but not the PC as I get a 'hang' on a cold boot. A reboot (even from cold) works OK. I suspect a power supply or capacitor problem. When I've tried Sleep mode I get erratic behaviour on wake up.

Interested in what others do.

 

[whs]

Every night. Sleep mode during the day.

 

[TVeblen]

I'm guessing that what most people in this group would do is fix the computer so it operates correctly.

For the main question/poll, I put my computer to sleep if I'm going to be away for 15 minutes or more, and I shut it down if I'm going to be away for an hour or more.
Particularly now, summer in the northern hemisphere. I don't need this little space heater running if I'm not using it.

I am also a believer in restarting on a regular basis (daily, at least) just to keep the OS from "getting old". When you boot a computer everything loads fresh and the RAM registers are all lined up - no lingering artifacts of poorly written software, etc, etc. I'm amazed that people are amazed that I can "fix" their computer simply by shutting down and starting cold.
I don't buy into the "wear & tear" idea that restarting somehow wears out the parts faster. It is heat and hours that are the enemy.

As for your restarting problems: If the computer hangs or displays erratic behavior only on a cold boot (power has been off for 30 sec or more) - but boots fine on any warm boot or restart or wake from sleep - then you would be looking at a hardware problem as your most likely suspect.

But if the hangs and behaviors don't occur in that very predictable pattern, then you could also be dealing with bad or corrupted drivers, incompatible programs trying to start at start-up, missing or corrupted system files, or a virus.

Go into your Event Viewer (Start > type: Event Viewer) and under Summary of Administrative Events, look at what you have for Critical events. You can double click an event and then copy the table to post here. That may give some insight into what is causing your freezes.

 

[richc46]

Sleep mode when not in use and power down once a week.

 

[NilsE]

Power up in the docking station when I get to work.

Leave powered up as long as I am in the office.

Sleep when I leave work to either go to a client or home.

Sleep and wake up multiple times during the evening.

Power down before I leave home for work in the morning.

 

[Luckystar]

Always power down at night, as my Drive unit is right next to my bed and the fans, even though on low, are quite loud.

also, I need complete silence to drop off to sleep as well.

If i have stuff downloading that is taking a while i.e. games and movies, i boot up before i leave for work.

Lucky

 

[CarlTR6]

Sleep mode when not in use and power down once a week.

Same here. It doesn't produce any heat to speak of in the sleep mode.

 

[scoopeeedoo]

First action in the morning (except the first human normal one at wake up...) : boot up...
Last action before sleeping : shutdown...
Between the two i shutdown if i leave more than an hour...
And in case of night tasks (downloading, uploading, defrag,...) i run a shutdown timer if possible.

system control.gadget

 

[Kirsch]

I don't ever shut mine down lol

It's always running, as most of the time I put music on when I go to sleep (helps me sleep, grew up with a pair of headphones on my head, pops was a DJ).

 

[Carl Lawrence]

Mine is only on when I am using it. The rest of time it is unplugged.

 

[DocBrown]

I tend to leave all my PC's running 24/7 except for reboots on new installs. I power down the monitors at night while sleeping. Only completely shut off when needed, like for adding new parts, etc

 

[NoN]

Depend what i'm doing, voted daily basis, but it could two days because when i'm on uTorrent for Live Gigs only, it cannot turn on to sleep mode. So guess every two days!

 

[gladson1976]

I power mine up only when I use it (which is most of the time) and power down when I'm finished with whatever I'm doing, but sometimes I hibernate it (if I have lots of stuff open and am lazy to save them or want to continue later)

 

[pparks1]

I leave my server on 24x7...but all of my desktops get shut off if I am not going to use them for a couple of hours. These machines just suck up quite a bit of power these days with high end cards and such that leaving them always on is just wasting money in my opinion.

 

[mickey megabyte]

same as pparks1 above, desktop machines are only powered when they need to be - saves money, noise, and wear and tear on fans etc. it doesn't take long to boot 'em up if i need them.

i've been playing around with windows home server for a day or two, that stays on 24/7 - luckily it's a really quiet box drawing low power.

 

[Cato]

I pay attention to my ram usage. At first boot it's usually at about 19% at idle. When it gets to 30%+, I usually power down. Pretty much just a quirk that I've carried over from Windows 95.

I use sleep exclusively when away from it for any length of time. I also turn off the monitors because of the horror stores I've read about monitor files. I'd rather do something that may not be necessary than to wish I had.

 

[mickey megabyte]

monitor files?

do you mean flies?

i notice that in the summer they love to poop on my screens. anyone else have this problem?

 

[swarfega]

Very rarely do I need to power down. Only when I need to change something.

 

[noobvious]

I power down generally once a week, but I use sleep mode if I'm going to be away form the computer for more than a half hour.

 

[HammerHead]

Power

I pretty much operate like Cato. I watch my ram usage and reboot accordingly some times. Once in a while I reboot because something is not working quite right (not a common occurence). I use sleep mode because I have had some problems with hibernate.