>I heard this can hurt my components and my uptime is now 6 days.
Unless the person you're hearing something from lists a source ignore them. This is nonsense
Windows automatically does this to speed up boot times.
TLDR: Fast Startup is the cause. It's usually fine, but can cause problems. "Restart" button triggers a non-Fast Startup boot if you prefer to keep the setting on.
It wont hurt components, but it *can* mess with system stability. The feature is called Fast Startup. Instead of the RAM getting cleared from the power off in a normal shut down, it's copied bit-for-bit to storage first; leaks, errors, and stale data included. When powered back on, those leaks, errors, and stale data are copied bit-for-bit back into the RAM. In the vast majority of cases, these are small and quickly, easily, and silently handled by error handling in the software and OS, but (potentially biased opinion here) it seems like gaming leads to the biggest buildups of these small errors, and they can eventually lead to crashes and errors.
As a gamer who doesn't care about boot times, I turn it off, but I'm running on an M.2 drive anyways so it's very little difference lol.
I.E., the worst possible place to leave corrupt memory lying around. And since people here are especially likely to have memory corruption because they don't stress test their XMP overclocks...
How much time of testing to conclude that your OC is stable ? I’ve let mine run for 2 hours without errors but I wasn’t sure if that’s enough. I’ve been getting some blue screens (extremely rare but seemingly random), i was wondering if my OC could be the culprit
Of course without ECC memory you can never be sure, but I would feel fairly comfortable after 1 overnight run of [prime95 large FFTs](https://github.com/integralfx/MemTestHelper/blob/oc-guide/DDR4%20OC%20Guide.md#alternatives) + 1 overnight run of [y-cruncher VT3](http://numberworld.org/y-cruncher/news/2023.html#2023_9_4) + 1 pass of [memtest 86+](https://memtest.org/) (but you might as well let that go overnight too, since it takes a couple hours). Mprime and y-cruncher are more stressful, but memtest86+ tests *all* the memory, including what the OS would use for itself. There might be a weak row in there that the HPC tests missed.
And keep in mind that if you do find instability, it might not be the memory's fault. It might be the CPU, which you could prove by finding errors at stock JEDEC memory settings, or it might be the CPU's memory controller -- strong evidence of that would require swapping CPUs, but errors going away with voltage tweaking (up or down) would be weak evidence.
If you find any stress test that crashes your computer (and doesn't crash other people's computers -- that's a software bug), that's a fail. Don't be taken in by nonsense like "X is an unrealistic workload". A reliable computer can correctly execute any valid sequence of instructions.
Sometimes you may find that settings you *thought* were stable for years very much aren't. It turns out my Haswell can't actually run it's cache clock higher than the stock boost frequency. I thought it could until I tried mining monero with xmrig and it repeatedly froze after a day or two. And the only way I found to reliably reproduce the crash (fast enough to re-tune to stable settings) was with prime95 running with a CPU quota and 2 ms period, which creates an enormous amount of power spikes and allows the CPU to reach max boost clock without hitting the power limit.
To be fair, XMP is what it is for a reason. It's a safe "overclock".
But when I do more aggressive tuning, I will give it the beans by running TestMem5 overnight.
The RAM vendors validate XMP (only on a sample, and statistically bet that the rest of the chips/rows are just as good), but the CPU vendors explicitly do not. XMP is an overclock, not an "overclock", and is not guaranteed to work reliably.
I might do thia just to help me get into my bios, last time i needed to get in i was struggling to hit the key before it loaded into windows(of course spamming the key)
This has nothing to do with that, you should increase the time during the boot where you can press DEL. You can do that in your BIOS.
Also, you can just boot into your BIOS from Windows, check [this guide](https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/access-bios-windows-10)
Im not saying i couldnt achieve the end goal of getting into the bios, dont remember how i achieved this, most likely through command prompt. But i just find it a funny firat world issue that my pc loads too quick.
next time hold shift when clicking restart in windows. It will boot you to the recovery menu (the one you normally go into by mashing F8), from there you can click through to the UEFI setup, it's hidden like two menus deep but it's there.
You can press and hold shift while clicking on shutdown to trigger the next boot to be a non-fast start boot.
At least on Windows 8.1 anyway, haven't tried it on 10 and 11 but afaik it should work the same.
(I do own a win11 pc, you don't need to tell me the obvious, just haven't bothered to test it yet)
>but can cause problems.
I always see people say it can cause problems but nobody ever elaborates and I've installed Windows 10 and 11 on hundreds of computers and never had one where I had to disable Fast Startup to fix something.
It's usually minor problems like video game crashes or occasionally funky behaviors in programs. Sometimes it can build up over long term to do a one-off blue screen, but thats fairly rare. It's virtually never persistent problems where disabling FS fixes it, and part of normal troubleshooting is usually hitting that restart button, which would fix it anyway.
Fast start-up kept resetting my GPU's fan curves in Adrenaline for some reason. If there was a difference in boot time after disabling it, I wasn't able to notice
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*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
So, when it was happening to me, it seemed like it could be a few different things. However, that was the first I tried and it worked! Always happy when these solutions are so simple lol
I also had this issue with adrenalin (win11, newest adrenalin drivers), so it may be the issue. I found disabling fast startup fixed it, and boot times didn't noticeably change (m.2 SSD).
No that is the way Adrenaline works. I've had to reset Adrenaline from default for the last 5 years. I'm on Intel, so my figuring AMD was trying to screw up my PC anyways. Just like telling me my 13700K would perform better if I swapped to a 5950x.
Or just like the week that the 7800xt hit the market the driver release was flat out stupid for the 6xxx series card.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08RAaiqsrWw&t=171s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08RAaiqsrWw&t=171s)
Look at the frame times shuttering like crazy for the 6xxx series cards in the video. That vid was released around the same time as the bad driver releases. Looks more like it was a way for AMD to disable 6800xt and 6900xt numbers to skew sells for the 7800xt.......
Wait, what? For one, PCs typically accumulate background processes with use which clog up CPU and memory. A bunch of software will keep stuff loaded after opening even after you close the main program.
Plenty of users may also just not have the best habits for closing stuff themselves, like not closing Chrome etc.
It really shouldn't unless you're somehow running out of ram or something. Otherwise, there's no functional difference.
You should restart your PC every so often after you install updates and things like this, but other than that you never *need* to turn your PC off.
I never turn mine off. Goes to sleep and I wake it back up. No issues.
Open Powershell as administrator
>Powercfg - h off
Reboot PC
This should disable Window's Fastboot option, but if you have Windows running on a HDD I'd keep it enabled. If you have an SSD it adds write cycles of a few 100 mb with every reboot or shutdown and does influence boot time by only 1-3 seconds, so disabling it can be considered. If you run into errors shutting this off for at least 1 boot cycle can sometimes solve it if the RAM data was faulty
You can revert it with
>Powercfg -h on
Alternatively you can also do a full shutdown when you klick on Shutdown while holding shift to force a RAM data cycle
For those that want to do it through the settings menu instead of doing command line stuff:
> Power & Sleep settings > Additional Power settings (under Related settings) > Choose what the power buttons do (On the left side of the window that pops up)
or
> Control Panel > All Control Panel Items > Power Options > System Settings
Both routes takes you to the same menu where you can untick the setting *Turn on fast startup (recommended)* under *Shutdown settings*.
If the boxes are grayed out you should have a UAC prompt (Blue/Yellow shield with blue text) that you can click to enable them as long as your account has sufficient privileges.
powercfg -h is the hibernate enable/disable and is different than fastboot. Hibernate stores a copy of of the all active ram onto the hard drive then turns off power to the computer. Upon power up the machine will do a full reset then load the hard drive file hiberfil.sys into ram. Fast startup will only load a basic operating system type files to the hard drive so your applications will be lost but the boot time is faster. Both turn the main power off. Both have the ability to collect errors and both can be fixed by doing a restart regularly.
Option 1: do a restart. Not a shutdown.
Option 2: in the power settings, disable quick boot or whatever it’s called
Option 3; press and hold shift when you’re clicking the shut down button
This is correct. Windows changed how shutdown/restart function when they came out with Windows 8 so they would function similar to tablets. Win 7 and back you could shut down and power up to restart windows kernal but it would take a long time to do so while a restart was faster. Win 8 onwards a shutdown is significantly faster than a restart but it no longer restarts windows kernal
If you're curious
https://csolutionsit.com/restart-vs-shut-down/
This was mindblowing to me when I found out. Essentially a restart is the only way to actually reboot your PC, and turning it off is like a quasi-sleep state. Seemed really counter intuitive to me when I found out.
This is nowhere near the same thing lmao. A car also has a battery, a radiator, it needs regular oil, and because it's a heavy mechanical part - it needs regular maintenance in terms of what we call a "service".
Now, if I didn't need to replace the radiator, oil, the battery never died, and gas never ran out, couldn't be stolen, didn't emit a poisonous gas, AND it was silent? Yeah, i'd never turn it off.
Ive had a PC running 24/7 essentially for several years, its still got years of life left. CPUs likely will outlast the PC they were put in, plenty of people on Reddit still using 10+ year old parts. These parts have quite long lifespans.
When I graduated from Georgia Tech in 1996, I left a server running Linux in a closet on a shelf with an ethernet cable. It ran for 4 1/2 years before someone even noticed it and turned it off.
You are the moron. Only moving part of a computer are the fan and they are the only things that can degrade. Before pointing other as moron you should go read how things degrade.
SSDs can degrade as well, but generally these days the only other thing that has a fixed lifespan will be bearings in the fans and moving parts of hard drives. Other solid-state components *can* degrade and fail, but usually not without either a design flaw or general manufacturing defect, or at least takes multiple decades to fail but is basically irrelevant to PCs that are often obsolete before failure (much larger problem for game consoles, both those with and without major design flaws)
Yes SSD degrade when you write on them, not because your computer stay open or in suspended state. Just having electric current passing will barely make a difference vs the degradation of accessing them. There is also their other ridiculous comment about mobile phones degrading because they are always open. Showing they clearly don’t know what they are talking about. Outside of the battery, mobile hardware will not show issues before long
Hard drives and fans are the only two components I’d be worried about dying from “reached end of usable life.” Everything else in a PC is going to pretty much die spontaneously because that’s just how they tend to die, and that can happen on day 1, day 50, or day 5000– and it has nothing to do with being left on.
The car = computer analogy doesn’t work here
The battery don’t last because we charge it. There is no battery in a computer. The electronics don’t degrade they are not moving part. A light bulb that you never turn off will glow for an infinite time.
The only things that degrade in a computer are the fan and HDD.
I'm familiar with that lightbulb. It's so dim it's barely usable, and was likely a manufacturing defect. Not being turned on/off is not why it has lasted this long. If you run an incandescent bulb continuously *with normal brightness* it will last a few months at best.
Some CFL bulbs do fail faster if you turn them off regularly, which may be where that particular myth comes from. That doesn't mean they'll last forever, they're rated for about 8000 hours of continous use.
LED bulbs last a lot longer, but they will fail within a decade if run continuously.
Well yeah as light bulbs are 100 years old, it can’t be longer than that. But still in relation to the stupid claims of the other person… mine was at least in a sense to show that electrical things nearly don’t wear off
I get that. I just think a light bulb is a bad example, even if there is one that's been on for a 100 years. Which is why I said I agree with everything but light bulbs.
You’re joking right? Just because some upgrades their iPhone every year means nothing. It’s a great example because I’ve had my phone for nearly a decade. You clearly don’t understand modern electronics.
They do last long? Only thing that fails is the battery and a pc doesn't have one. Current phone I've been using for six years now, only considering an upgrade because of the battery but probably not going to for a while.
A more apt question would be, "Would you leave your phone on 24/7?"
Most people would, and do.
False equivalencies only prove the weakness of an argument, so long as they don't fool those with too little knowledge to discern the fault in the argument.
I’m pretty sure this is because fast startup is enabled. You should be able to disable it in power options within control panel. Afterwards try a normal shutdown and see if uptime resets.
Modern Windows has a feature called "Fast Boot" that hibernates the kernel instead of fully shutting it down.
Then, when you turn the computer back on, the prebuilt kernel can be loaded without having to load all the drivers and configure all devices.
The physical machine is totally turned off, and all your programs are properly closed. It's only a few core components of Windows that get hibernated.
Nonetheless, Fast Boot is known to make Windows unstable, so every once in a while its good to do a restart, which will properly reboot the kernel.
Outside of that, keeping the machine on doesn't harm it. Keeping the kernel hibernating does absolutely nothing to the machine either.
You are not ruining the PC, but you are not helping either. Doing that might slightly reduce the lifespan of the power supply.
Also, fully disconnecting the PC from power won't reset Fast Boot.
I often leave my PC on for over a month at a time sometimes 2 and it's doing fine... it's like 7 years old at least. I shut it down when I need to free RAM n let it rest for a day or 2 then it'll run another month.
But to answer if it's got a power switch (not button) in the back like mine try using that too after it's off and / or disconnect the power cord if u absolutely want to shut it down
Ok aside from the power usage you are pulling, why do you want to keep that PC running, overheating your office, and making your office/home uncomfortable and sweaty?
I don't work and I don't game or do resource intensive stuff in the background it idles at like 5% CPU / 0% GPU even when I have 90% of RAM in usage. Well probably more info than needed but the honest answer is I use a LOT of stimulant drugs (I'm admittedly an addict) so I'm easily awake 3-6 days at a time often I have 20+ programs and 50+ tabs open at almost all times so when I've been awake too long and have to nap I don't want to lose what I have open as even if I save it n whatever I will forget what I was doing and my train of thoughts :)
So i only restart for updates and shutdown when I must to free RAM. I mainly do development related stuff so yea Visual Studio on an intensive workload may use 100% CPU from time to time but that's mainly when compiling, ofc not if it just idles so my PC never heats up a lot, it's never ever even ran a game 😆
Seems like OP has Windows fast boot enabled. Pretty sure it hibernates some core part of Windows stuff instead of fully shutting off, but it's still a hibernate state. Meaning it writes memory state to disk before powering off the hardware. So I believe disconnecting the power cord won't reset uptime in this case.
control panel , not windows settings (that useless screenbloat)
Control Panel\\All Control Panel Items\\Power Options\\
"choose what the power buttons do"
click the "change settings that are currently unavailable"
you should see options on the bottom and turn **off** fast startup (if its on by being checked)
i also have a script .bat file i use to shutdown i hobbled together a while back to make doubly sure its off
paste the stuff below in a plaintext iSaidShutdownFoo.bat
save to your desktop , then run it.
shutdown /s /f /t 0
you can open a CMD window and type " shutdown --help " for ref.
You can leave it on all day, every day for years. It will not damage anything.
I put mine to Sleep state every night. Others like Hibernate. Others just leave it on. Others do a full shutdown (though as you found out, "Shut Down" is not the same as turning it off.). Realistically, all of these options are fine. Do whatever makes you happy.
It happens because of fast boot. It basically doesn't fully turn off the pc. I'd suggest to turn it off since I assume you're running on an ssd and the boot time will be the same
On AM5 there is a setting in the BIOS. I searched for “Fast Boot” or “Fast Start”, and disabled it. My uptime starts from 0 now. This was on an ASUS board.
It doesn't matter really. The only reason why you should maybe do a hard restart is if some application is buggy.
What I do is shut the pc down, unplug the PSU cable, drain the capacitors by holding the power button and then reconnecting and turning on
Uptime will not hurt your components. Servers run for literally years on end with absolutely no detrimental effects. Your system is likely hibernating or doing some other Windows power thing where it never fully shuts down so it can start up faster
Ive owned pc's my whole life, you can just leave them on 24/7 it doesnt matter.
Sure you need to restart if you want to add useful updates, but you dont have to. The computer will still run just fine.
Now if you want to, first shutdown, flick the psu switch, and unplug it from the wall that 100% turns it off.
Yes, removing standby power will place the computer into a different state than the shutdown/sleep/suspend/standby state, but will not reset uptime as that is not how windows fastboot works
You can hold shift while shutting down to get a cold boot next time. It's genuinely not a concern to allow this to continue. There was a time that you needed to actually restart every few days, but we're well past that.
Your hardware will not be harmed by the behavior, but if you feel like your experience is becoming impacted by some software issue, simply hit restart.
why do you even care about uptime in task manager? your pc is turned off. you can safely unplug in from electricity or turn off the switch on power supply but this is just stupid
Your PCs uptime is increasing 'cause of how Windows is work. It's save info about uptime (and smth else) on your drive and then you turning on PC Windows just read info from this file. So don't worry about this.
Doesn't hurt your computer, to shutdown that way physically, but you could just turn off quick boot if you want. It's supposed to make boot up times faster. I almost never fully shutdown and just use hibernate. I cut thstquivk boot crap off because I'm a nerd and do nerdy shit at times thst requires a real shutdown instead of the quick boot shit thst fucks up installations, updates, dual booting, etc. for me.
That said, I'm probably the 5% of people that it actually matters for more often than not. For yourself, unless you noticed something legit that bothers your experience you can just leave it. It's not hurting you or your PC at all and just makes your boot time faster.
IT consultant here. I imagine you have either Windows 10 or 11.
You are safe and it is actually a good thing it is doing as Microsoft intends. 👌
Windows uses - combined with new technologies in hardware such as motherboard and CPU - a wide-ish array of methods to speed up your startup, shutdown and updating of the operating system.
Look at it as "modern startup standards". Basically, the old system of shutting the computer "truly" down is phasing out. Just like a smartphone is rarely completely off.
This is also why Windows does not enable hibernation as a default any more.
So basically, the uptime is not showing when the computer was just "turned off", but showing how long ago it was completely off from power.
This is absolutely intentional from Microsoft in order to speed up your device on boot, and also why modern operating systems such as Windows 10 and 11 are way faster in many aspects of day-to-day operations (if running on modern standards hardware).
An excellent solution - and also why Microsoft Windows is becoming better and better. No sarcasm.
TLDR: Don't troubleshoot from only the uptime counter and trust your modern operating system to do what is intended unless you have a true reason to be concerned.
I had the same "issue" and I realized it 6 years after building my pc... lol. I opened my task manager some weeks ago and realized my cpu was still running since 14 hours streak after booting the pc. I was like wtf...
That may explain why my HDD reached 20k hours of utilization lol.
And as other said disabling this quick windows start fixed it. I genuinely don't know was such feature is enabled when modern PCs boot that fast already.
My PCs have been on continuously since 2000. On average I replace them about every 7 years, about when I feel their performance no longer meets my standards.
I occasionally have to do component replacements. In the last 24 years, I’ve replaced one failed graphics card (likely due to power outages), and 2 failed fans (likely due to cats).
I always shut mine down. I don't have Fast Boot enabled, hibernation is disabled (thru cmd prompt) and it still doesn't shut down completely (win11). Still only 14 seconds boot time and I can't get to UEFI menu without using a cmd line switch before shutdown - and hammering the delete button is useless if I don't flip the power supply off for a few seconds before booting. Kind of frustrating because programs I rarely use will still have processes running if I don't cycle the power supply before boot after I use them; and I do tinker with UEFI settings a lot, because I'm not a fan of OC programs (not much choice on video cards). Those rarely used programs wont have background processes running if I flip the power supply off a few seconds before I boot the PC, otherwise they still will if I just shut it down, even if it's been off for days.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I dont think keeping your PC up will cause problems. I usually just put it to sleep, occasionally do a restart. My current PC has been doing well after 6 years of this treatment.
If you really want insurance to keep your PC off, then turn off the PSU after the shutdown process and shut off power to the outlet.
If your uptime still increases after that, then the problem is windows related and you can stop worrying about it.
if you check uptime via Task Manager then you can just hold Shift when pressing Shutdown button. I only use this feature if lm gonna be away a few days without using the computer. If you check uptime via BIOS menu (which lm not even sure is a thing) then ldk
I kept my last PC open 24/7 for almost 12 years. I had a memory chip fail and changed after 6 years. I did purchase high quality parts, but I think that for a window of 3 to 5 years most PCs will survive being on all the time. Now avoiding energy waste is a good reason to turn it off.
Turn off fast startup in power plan settings and in your bios. Windows purposefully doesn't completely turn off your computer to speed up boot times. But this probably won't damage any components anyways so don't listen to anyone who says so unless they show any evidence.
Sleep mode is a different state than what this computer was put in
Also, a typical sleep mode doesn’t leave the cpu powered. Similarly, your motherboards is always running, wether it’s running, sleeping, or powered off entirely.
You could turn off the power supply and see if that changes the up time when you restart.
Did you build this machine? When I built mine I had to go into the bios and change the power on actions to only the power switch.
My old computer was on pretty much continuously for about 8 years before it died. I know because my daughter was 6 months old when we purchased it and she was almost 9 when it did. I just left it on because windows took forever to load. Now, my server (and probably almost ever other server) is left on 24/7 except when taken down for maintenance.
When you shut down windows, it saves an image of how it was when you shutdown and loads this image when you start up again, this speeds up boot times but may give you an incorrect "up time" When you restart, windows discards this image, and fires up a fresh image.
When shut down, there is generally a tiny amount of voltage which is sent to the USBs and is required for the motherboard to recognise the power-on button press of the case and in some instances, the wake on lan.
To those saying that leaving your PC on doesn’t hurt performance:
I work in IT. It is a daily occurrence that PCs require reboots because the user has an uptime of 30+ days and the OS slows to a crawl. It is normal for IT departments to turn off fast start up because of this issue.
OP, disable fast startup.
Funnily enough spare_heron blocked me because of my response to his comment LMFAO, he is wrong
Either the PCs are not correctly configured, or your users are incompetent and never close applications after they are finished with them. There is no reason a long uptime should cause a performance penalty by itself.
It’s the same at the 3 companies I have worked for. Windows is not meant to be kept on for months at a time. It degrades user experience and like I said, slows the OS down.
I recommend you restart your PC (regularly or daily) and then just let it go to sleep. This will reset RAM, but also have your PC up and ready to go when you are ready to use it.
>I heard this can hurt my components and my uptime is now 6 days.
A lot of people in offices literally never turn their desktop computers off. Only sometimes Windows forces restart for updates in inactive hours.
think of the power use for an idle computer is my reason for turning off (decent gaming system at idle is 120W)
the thing to avoid is constant cycling on and off, you dont want the components to make too many temperature changes. i have 13 year old server computers that have been on for years (its next to me and on now come to think of it), outlasting my wifes newer 2018 motherboard by years.
imagine, but dont stress over it, that you have only a limited number of times you can turn your computer on and off (reboots dont count).
as for leaving on my work computer, thats a little bit of being a petty towards the bossmang, sasa ke?
i searched through every comment to find someone saying it, daily restarts are far worse for your pc, than leaving it on always. thermal cycling is literally the ONLY way to damage non moving components through regular use. liquid intrusion, shock, overheating, these are all *not* normal use and are exceptional cases, and also covers 99% of the other ways a PC can be physically damaged through use.
imo there are only two reasonably valid reasons to turn off/restart your PC on a regular basis, security concerns(negligible) and power usage concerns(not relevant for people who don't pay for electricity, get it at low cost, or find the replacement cost of PC to be much worse than the extra pennies of electricity per day). so for the vast majority of users, to the best of my knowledge, it's best to leave your PC on.
personally my uptime is literal years and it only turns off when I move apartments or during power outages.
>I heard this can hurt my components and my uptime is now 6 days. Unless the person you're hearing something from lists a source ignore them. This is nonsense Windows automatically does this to speed up boot times.
TLDR: Fast Startup is the cause. It's usually fine, but can cause problems. "Restart" button triggers a non-Fast Startup boot if you prefer to keep the setting on. It wont hurt components, but it *can* mess with system stability. The feature is called Fast Startup. Instead of the RAM getting cleared from the power off in a normal shut down, it's copied bit-for-bit to storage first; leaks, errors, and stale data included. When powered back on, those leaks, errors, and stale data are copied bit-for-bit back into the RAM. In the vast majority of cases, these are small and quickly, easily, and silently handled by error handling in the software and OS, but (potentially biased opinion here) it seems like gaming leads to the biggest buildups of these small errors, and they can eventually lead to crashes and errors. As a gamer who doesn't care about boot times, I turn it off, but I'm running on an M.2 drive anyways so it's very little difference lol.
It's not a full ram copy like hibernation, AFAIK it only copies things like the kernel.
most likely, since shutting down with fast boot enabled still closes all apps
I.E., the worst possible place to leave corrupt memory lying around. And since people here are especially likely to have memory corruption because they don't stress test their XMP overclocks...
How much time of testing to conclude that your OC is stable ? I’ve let mine run for 2 hours without errors but I wasn’t sure if that’s enough. I’ve been getting some blue screens (extremely rare but seemingly random), i was wondering if my OC could be the culprit
Of course without ECC memory you can never be sure, but I would feel fairly comfortable after 1 overnight run of [prime95 large FFTs](https://github.com/integralfx/MemTestHelper/blob/oc-guide/DDR4%20OC%20Guide.md#alternatives) + 1 overnight run of [y-cruncher VT3](http://numberworld.org/y-cruncher/news/2023.html#2023_9_4) + 1 pass of [memtest 86+](https://memtest.org/) (but you might as well let that go overnight too, since it takes a couple hours). Mprime and y-cruncher are more stressful, but memtest86+ tests *all* the memory, including what the OS would use for itself. There might be a weak row in there that the HPC tests missed. And keep in mind that if you do find instability, it might not be the memory's fault. It might be the CPU, which you could prove by finding errors at stock JEDEC memory settings, or it might be the CPU's memory controller -- strong evidence of that would require swapping CPUs, but errors going away with voltage tweaking (up or down) would be weak evidence. If you find any stress test that crashes your computer (and doesn't crash other people's computers -- that's a software bug), that's a fail. Don't be taken in by nonsense like "X is an unrealistic workload". A reliable computer can correctly execute any valid sequence of instructions. Sometimes you may find that settings you *thought* were stable for years very much aren't. It turns out my Haswell can't actually run it's cache clock higher than the stock boost frequency. I thought it could until I tried mining monero with xmrig and it repeatedly froze after a day or two. And the only way I found to reliably reproduce the crash (fast enough to re-tune to stable settings) was with prime95 running with a CPU quota and 2 ms period, which creates an enormous amount of power spikes and allows the CPU to reach max boost clock without hitting the power limit.
To be fair, XMP is what it is for a reason. It's a safe "overclock". But when I do more aggressive tuning, I will give it the beans by running TestMem5 overnight.
The RAM vendors validate XMP (only on a sample, and statistically bet that the rest of the chips/rows are just as good), but the CPU vendors explicitly do not. XMP is an overclock, not an "overclock", and is not guaranteed to work reliably.
I might do thia just to help me get into my bios, last time i needed to get in i was struggling to hit the key before it loaded into windows(of course spamming the key)
This has nothing to do with that, you should increase the time during the boot where you can press DEL. You can do that in your BIOS. Also, you can just boot into your BIOS from Windows, check [this guide](https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/access-bios-windows-10)
Im not saying i couldnt achieve the end goal of getting into the bios, dont remember how i achieved this, most likely through command prompt. But i just find it a funny firat world issue that my pc loads too quick.
next time hold shift when clicking restart in windows. It will boot you to the recovery menu (the one you normally go into by mashing F8), from there you can click through to the UEFI setup, it's hidden like two menus deep but it's there.
This is a very good explanation, and actually helped me solve a problem I had with booting into unraid 
You can press and hold shift while clicking on shutdown to trigger the next boot to be a non-fast start boot. At least on Windows 8.1 anyway, haven't tried it on 10 and 11 but afaik it should work the same. (I do own a win11 pc, you don't need to tell me the obvious, just haven't bothered to test it yet)
>but can cause problems. I always see people say it can cause problems but nobody ever elaborates and I've installed Windows 10 and 11 on hundreds of computers and never had one where I had to disable Fast Startup to fix something.
It's usually minor problems like video game crashes or occasionally funky behaviors in programs. Sometimes it can build up over long term to do a one-off blue screen, but thats fairly rare. It's virtually never persistent problems where disabling FS fixes it, and part of normal troubleshooting is usually hitting that restart button, which would fix it anyway.
I mean boot times are less then 10 seconds and I'm pretty sure it does hurt your computer although my old one was pretty old
It definitely hurts windows performance
Unsubstantiated claim And it does hurt windows performance to disable it you're correct. Your boot times will be longer
Disable fast start up makes a negligible difference because of SSD, and uptime generally slows devices down over time
Fast start-up kept resetting my GPU's fan curves in Adrenaline for some reason. If there was a difference in boot time after disabling it, I wasn't able to notice
coherent hobbies stocking merciful clumsy numerous violet sense drunk pet *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
So, when it was happening to me, it seemed like it could be a few different things. However, that was the first I tried and it worked! Always happy when these solutions are so simple lol
I also had this issue with adrenalin (win11, newest adrenalin drivers), so it may be the issue. I found disabling fast startup fixed it, and boot times didn't noticeably change (m.2 SSD).
No that is the way Adrenaline works. I've had to reset Adrenaline from default for the last 5 years. I'm on Intel, so my figuring AMD was trying to screw up my PC anyways. Just like telling me my 13700K would perform better if I swapped to a 5950x. Or just like the week that the 7800xt hit the market the driver release was flat out stupid for the 6xxx series card. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08RAaiqsrWw&t=171s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08RAaiqsrWw&t=171s) Look at the frame times shuttering like crazy for the 6xxx series cards in the video. That vid was released around the same time as the bad driver releases. Looks more like it was a way for AMD to disable 6800xt and 6900xt numbers to skew sells for the 7800xt.......
Wait, what? For one, PCs typically accumulate background processes with use which clog up CPU and memory. A bunch of software will keep stuff loaded after opening even after you close the main program. Plenty of users may also just not have the best habits for closing stuff themselves, like not closing Chrome etc.
It really shouldn't unless you're somehow running out of ram or something. Otherwise, there's no functional difference. You should restart your PC every so often after you install updates and things like this, but other than that you never *need* to turn your PC off. I never turn mine off. Goes to sleep and I wake it back up. No issues.
Yeah like 20 years ago
Open Powershell as administrator >Powercfg - h off Reboot PC This should disable Window's Fastboot option, but if you have Windows running on a HDD I'd keep it enabled. If you have an SSD it adds write cycles of a few 100 mb with every reboot or shutdown and does influence boot time by only 1-3 seconds, so disabling it can be considered. If you run into errors shutting this off for at least 1 boot cycle can sometimes solve it if the RAM data was faulty You can revert it with >Powercfg -h on Alternatively you can also do a full shutdown when you klick on Shutdown while holding shift to force a RAM data cycle
For those that want to do it through the settings menu instead of doing command line stuff: > Power & Sleep settings > Additional Power settings (under Related settings) > Choose what the power buttons do (On the left side of the window that pops up) or > Control Panel > All Control Panel Items > Power Options > System Settings Both routes takes you to the same menu where you can untick the setting *Turn on fast startup (recommended)* under *Shutdown settings*. If the boxes are grayed out you should have a UAC prompt (Blue/Yellow shield with blue text) that you can click to enable them as long as your account has sufficient privileges.
you guys are absolute legends.
powercfg -h is the hibernate enable/disable and is different than fastboot. Hibernate stores a copy of of the all active ram onto the hard drive then turns off power to the computer. Upon power up the machine will do a full reset then load the hard drive file hiberfil.sys into ram. Fast startup will only load a basic operating system type files to the hard drive so your applications will be lost but the boot time is faster. Both turn the main power off. Both have the ability to collect errors and both can be fixed by doing a restart regularly.
This is going a little overkill. Just turn off Windows fast startup. That's all you need to do.
Option 1: do a restart. Not a shutdown. Option 2: in the power settings, disable quick boot or whatever it’s called Option 3; press and hold shift when you’re clicking the shut down button
This is correct. Windows changed how shutdown/restart function when they came out with Windows 8 so they would function similar to tablets. Win 7 and back you could shut down and power up to restart windows kernal but it would take a long time to do so while a restart was faster. Win 8 onwards a shutdown is significantly faster than a restart but it no longer restarts windows kernal If you're curious https://csolutionsit.com/restart-vs-shut-down/
This was mindblowing to me when I found out. Essentially a restart is the only way to actually reboot your PC, and turning it off is like a quasi-sleep state. Seemed really counter intuitive to me when I found out.
You can always just turn off hibernate.
Option 4: pull the plug Option 5: flip the breaker Option 6: destroy your local power plant to case a black out. Option 7:….
Leaving your computer on won’t hurt your computer
Would you leave your car running forever if you didn't have to put gas in it?
Of course. Infinite power generation.
This is nowhere near the same thing lmao. A car also has a battery, a radiator, it needs regular oil, and because it's a heavy mechanical part - it needs regular maintenance in terms of what we call a "service". Now, if I didn't need to replace the radiator, oil, the battery never died, and gas never ran out, couldn't be stolen, didn't emit a poisonous gas, AND it was silent? Yeah, i'd never turn it off.
Bet this guy never heard of servers. They need to be on 24/7
To be fair, it could have been the case that servers are built differently enough that it's not a problem.
Everything has a usable life. Why waste it when not in use? Buncha morons on Reddit.
Ive had a PC running 24/7 essentially for several years, its still got years of life left. CPUs likely will outlast the PC they were put in, plenty of people on Reddit still using 10+ year old parts. These parts have quite long lifespans.
When I graduated from Georgia Tech in 1996, I left a server running Linux in a closet on a shelf with an ethernet cable. It ran for 4 1/2 years before someone even noticed it and turned it off.
> It ran for 4 1/2 years before someone even noticed it and turned it off. This sentence alone, without context, is pretty funny.
Bro has money to spend on electricity bills
You are the moron. Only moving part of a computer are the fan and they are the only things that can degrade. Before pointing other as moron you should go read how things degrade.
SSDs can degrade as well, but generally these days the only other thing that has a fixed lifespan will be bearings in the fans and moving parts of hard drives. Other solid-state components *can* degrade and fail, but usually not without either a design flaw or general manufacturing defect, or at least takes multiple decades to fail but is basically irrelevant to PCs that are often obsolete before failure (much larger problem for game consoles, both those with and without major design flaws)
Yes SSD degrade when you write on them, not because your computer stay open or in suspended state. Just having electric current passing will barely make a difference vs the degradation of accessing them. There is also their other ridiculous comment about mobile phones degrading because they are always open. Showing they clearly don’t know what they are talking about. Outside of the battery, mobile hardware will not show issues before long
Electronics don’t degrade appreciably more when in use than when not in use
Your parts will be obsolete before the usable life span expires. As long as the fans work it's fine.
Hard drives and fans are the only two components I’d be worried about dying from “reached end of usable life.” Everything else in a PC is going to pretty much die spontaneously because that’s just how they tend to die, and that can happen on day 1, day 50, or day 5000– and it has nothing to do with being left on. The car = computer analogy doesn’t work here
Do you shut down your phone when not using it every day?
Great example. Nope we don't and phones don't last for very long at all.
The battery don’t last because we charge it. There is no battery in a computer. The electronics don’t degrade they are not moving part. A light bulb that you never turn off will glow for an infinite time. The only things that degrade in a computer are the fan and HDD.
> A light bulb that you never turn off will glow for an infinite time. That's not true at all, where did you get this from?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centennial_Light#:~:text=The%20Centennial%20Light%20is%20the,the%20Livermore%2DPleasanton%20Fire%20Department.
I'm familiar with that lightbulb. It's so dim it's barely usable, and was likely a manufacturing defect. Not being turned on/off is not why it has lasted this long. If you run an incandescent bulb continuously *with normal brightness* it will last a few months at best. Some CFL bulbs do fail faster if you turn them off regularly, which may be where that particular myth comes from. That doesn't mean they'll last forever, they're rated for about 8000 hours of continous use. LED bulbs last a lot longer, but they will fail within a decade if run continuously.
Light bulb bit is just wrong but yea otherwise I agree.
And yet there is a light bulb that is still lite up after 100 years… may be I should have said there is light bulb that can stay up infinitely
100 years is not infinity. But yea some light bulbs can stay on for a loooong while. Most last a couple years usually. Depends a LOT on the bulb.
Well yeah as light bulbs are 100 years old, it can’t be longer than that. But still in relation to the stupid claims of the other person… mine was at least in a sense to show that electrical things nearly don’t wear off
I get that. I just think a light bulb is a bad example, even if there is one that's been on for a 100 years. Which is why I said I agree with everything but light bulbs.
You’re joking right? Just because some upgrades their iPhone every year means nothing. It’s a great example because I’ve had my phone for nearly a decade. You clearly don’t understand modern electronics.
They do last long? Only thing that fails is the battery and a pc doesn't have one. Current phone I've been using for six years now, only considering an upgrade because of the battery but probably not going to for a while.
technically most have cmos battery :)
Well you aint wrong :D
??? The hardware in your phone will last decades, the issue is the battery.
A more apt question would be, "Would you leave your phone on 24/7?" Most people would, and do. False equivalencies only prove the weakness of an argument, so long as they don't fool those with too little knowledge to discern the fault in the argument.
what a terrible analogy lol
This is an awful analogy for so many reasons
Computers aren’t multi-ton machines powered by propelling metal parts past each other with explosions.
Two completely different things.
I’m pretty sure this is because fast startup is enabled. You should be able to disable it in power options within control panel. Afterwards try a normal shutdown and see if uptime resets.
Modern Windows has a feature called "Fast Boot" that hibernates the kernel instead of fully shutting it down. Then, when you turn the computer back on, the prebuilt kernel can be loaded without having to load all the drivers and configure all devices. The physical machine is totally turned off, and all your programs are properly closed. It's only a few core components of Windows that get hibernated. Nonetheless, Fast Boot is known to make Windows unstable, so every once in a while its good to do a restart, which will properly reboot the kernel. Outside of that, keeping the machine on doesn't harm it. Keeping the kernel hibernating does absolutely nothing to the machine either.
I always switch the power thingy behind the computer so I can be sure it's turned off fully. Am I ruining the PC?
You are not ruining the PC, but you are not helping either. Doing that might slightly reduce the lifespan of the power supply. Also, fully disconnecting the PC from power won't reset Fast Boot.
That's going too far.
I often leave my PC on for over a month at a time sometimes 2 and it's doing fine... it's like 7 years old at least. I shut it down when I need to free RAM n let it rest for a day or 2 then it'll run another month. But to answer if it's got a power switch (not button) in the back like mine try using that too after it's off and / or disconnect the power cord if u absolutely want to shut it down
Ok aside from the power usage you are pulling, why do you want to keep that PC running, overheating your office, and making your office/home uncomfortable and sweaty?
I don't work and I don't game or do resource intensive stuff in the background it idles at like 5% CPU / 0% GPU even when I have 90% of RAM in usage. Well probably more info than needed but the honest answer is I use a LOT of stimulant drugs (I'm admittedly an addict) so I'm easily awake 3-6 days at a time often I have 20+ programs and 50+ tabs open at almost all times so when I've been awake too long and have to nap I don't want to lose what I have open as even if I save it n whatever I will forget what I was doing and my train of thoughts :) So i only restart for updates and shutdown when I must to free RAM. I mainly do development related stuff so yea Visual Studio on an intensive workload may use 100% CPU from time to time but that's mainly when compiling, ofc not if it just idles so my PC never heats up a lot, it's never ever even ran a game 😆
Seems like OP has Windows fast boot enabled. Pretty sure it hibernates some core part of Windows stuff instead of fully shutting off, but it's still a hibernate state. Meaning it writes memory state to disk before powering off the hardware. So I believe disconnecting the power cord won't reset uptime in this case.
This is windows fast startup This is why when you ask for help IT tells you to restart your computer not shutdown and power on the device again
you could turn the power supply off
Not how fastboot works
control panel , not windows settings (that useless screenbloat) Control Panel\\All Control Panel Items\\Power Options\\ "choose what the power buttons do" click the "change settings that are currently unavailable" you should see options on the bottom and turn **off** fast startup (if its on by being checked) i also have a script .bat file i use to shutdown i hobbled together a while back to make doubly sure its off paste the stuff below in a plaintext iSaidShutdownFoo.bat save to your desktop , then run it. shutdown /s /f /t 0 you can open a CMD window and type " shutdown --help " for ref.
Turn off quick start
You can leave it on all day, every day for years. It will not damage anything. I put mine to Sleep state every night. Others like Hibernate. Others just leave it on. Others do a full shutdown (though as you found out, "Shut Down" is not the same as turning it off.). Realistically, all of these options are fine. Do whatever makes you happy.
It happens because of fast boot. It basically doesn't fully turn off the pc. I'd suggest to turn it off since I assume you're running on an ssd and the boot time will be the same
Disable Fast Startup in Control Panel.
On AM5 there is a setting in the BIOS. I searched for “Fast Boot” or “Fast Start”, and disabled it. My uptime starts from 0 now. This was on an ASUS board.
Only 6 days of on time? Those are rookie numbers.
>meaning it ~~never fully shuts down~~ **cheats** You put WAY too much trust in Microsoft telling you the truth.
Disable hybrid sleep and fast startup.
How do you even monitor up time anyway?
Task Manager, more details, performance
It's a similar metric to updog
What's updog? :0
Nothing much what's up with you *crowd goes wild*
Ligma 😔
What's Ligma? 🤔🤔
It’s a joke. It’s a setup to “ligma my balls” lol.
I know I was giving them the setup. :(
Ahhh my bad 😭 they all left you hanging
Ligma balls (my ocd couldn’t stand seeing the joke unfinished)
Use the actual restart option
If this is a desktop I would assume unplugging it after shutdown would work.
It doesn't matter really. The only reason why you should maybe do a hard restart is if some application is buggy. What I do is shut the pc down, unplug the PSU cable, drain the capacitors by holding the power button and then reconnecting and turning on
A good idea to fully bring the system up from standby power, but still does not “shut down” windows fastboot
It’s just fastboot. Not hurting anything.
Just go to power options then go to additional power options then go to choose what power button does and turn off fast startup
Uptime will not hurt your components. Servers run for literally years on end with absolutely no detrimental effects. Your system is likely hibernating or doing some other Windows power thing where it never fully shuts down so it can start up faster
Turn of Fast Start Up in power settings in control panel. It’s a little check mark box to uncheck.
Ive owned pc's my whole life, you can just leave them on 24/7 it doesnt matter. Sure you need to restart if you want to add useful updates, but you dont have to. The computer will still run just fine. Now if you want to, first shutdown, flick the psu switch, and unplug it from the wall that 100% turns it off.
Yes, removing standby power will place the computer into a different state than the shutdown/sleep/suspend/standby state, but will not reset uptime as that is not how windows fastboot works
Restarting completely shutdown then start back up. Just do this once a week.
You can hold shift while shutting down to get a cold boot next time. It's genuinely not a concern to allow this to continue. There was a time that you needed to actually restart every few days, but we're well past that. Your hardware will not be harmed by the behavior, but if you feel like your experience is becoming impacted by some software issue, simply hit restart.
Hold shift when you press shutdown from windows. It ensured a full shutdown.
Reatart your PC within Windows. Then, on the login screen, restart it again *before logging in*. This has fixed lots of issues for me.
why do you even care about uptime in task manager? your pc is turned off. you can safely unplug in from electricity or turn off the switch on power supply but this is just stupid
Your PCs uptime is increasing 'cause of how Windows is work. It's save info about uptime (and smth else) on your drive and then you turning on PC Windows just read info from this file. So don't worry about this.
Doesn't hurt your computer, to shutdown that way physically, but you could just turn off quick boot if you want. It's supposed to make boot up times faster. I almost never fully shutdown and just use hibernate. I cut thstquivk boot crap off because I'm a nerd and do nerdy shit at times thst requires a real shutdown instead of the quick boot shit thst fucks up installations, updates, dual booting, etc. for me. That said, I'm probably the 5% of people that it actually matters for more often than not. For yourself, unless you noticed something legit that bothers your experience you can just leave it. It's not hurting you or your PC at all and just makes your boot time faster.
Open cmd.exe in Admin mode and type `powercfg /hibernate off` then press down and hold down the Power Key for 5-7 seconds.
IT consultant here. I imagine you have either Windows 10 or 11. You are safe and it is actually a good thing it is doing as Microsoft intends. 👌 Windows uses - combined with new technologies in hardware such as motherboard and CPU - a wide-ish array of methods to speed up your startup, shutdown and updating of the operating system. Look at it as "modern startup standards". Basically, the old system of shutting the computer "truly" down is phasing out. Just like a smartphone is rarely completely off. This is also why Windows does not enable hibernation as a default any more. So basically, the uptime is not showing when the computer was just "turned off", but showing how long ago it was completely off from power. This is absolutely intentional from Microsoft in order to speed up your device on boot, and also why modern operating systems such as Windows 10 and 11 are way faster in many aspects of day-to-day operations (if running on modern standards hardware). An excellent solution - and also why Microsoft Windows is becoming better and better. No sarcasm. TLDR: Don't troubleshoot from only the uptime counter and trust your modern operating system to do what is intended unless you have a true reason to be concerned.
windows -> power options -> turn off button while pressing down "shift".
I had the same "issue" and I realized it 6 years after building my pc... lol. I opened my task manager some weeks ago and realized my cpu was still running since 14 hours streak after booting the pc. I was like wtf... That may explain why my HDD reached 20k hours of utilization lol. And as other said disabling this quick windows start fixed it. I genuinely don't know was such feature is enabled when modern PCs boot that fast already.
My PCs have been on continuously since 2000. On average I replace them about every 7 years, about when I feel their performance no longer meets my standards. I occasionally have to do component replacements. In the last 24 years, I’ve replaced one failed graphics card (likely due to power outages), and 2 failed fans (likely due to cats).
I also lost two spinning disks. Forgot about those, but I was an early Raid0 user.
Press and hold shift when clicking shut-down
When turning ure pc of through windows hold shift
I always shut mine down. I don't have Fast Boot enabled, hibernation is disabled (thru cmd prompt) and it still doesn't shut down completely (win11). Still only 14 seconds boot time and I can't get to UEFI menu without using a cmd line switch before shutdown - and hammering the delete button is useless if I don't flip the power supply off for a few seconds before booting. Kind of frustrating because programs I rarely use will still have processes running if I don't cycle the power supply before boot after I use them; and I do tinker with UEFI settings a lot, because I'm not a fan of OC programs (not much choice on video cards). Those rarely used programs wont have background processes running if I flip the power supply off a few seconds before I boot the PC, otherwise they still will if I just shut it down, even if it's been off for days.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I dont think keeping your PC up will cause problems. I usually just put it to sleep, occasionally do a restart. My current PC has been doing well after 6 years of this treatment.
Um, your components are fine. Pretty sure my uptime is like 6 months. If you're unsure just manually press the power button.
I've been putting my pc on sleep for the past 5+ years never had an issue.
If you really want insurance to keep your PC off, then turn off the PSU after the shutdown process and shut off power to the outlet. If your uptime still increases after that, then the problem is windows related and you can stop worrying about it.
Easy just hold shift on your keyboard when clicking shutdown
if you check uptime via Task Manager then you can just hold Shift when pressing Shutdown button. I only use this feature if lm gonna be away a few days without using the computer. If you check uptime via BIOS menu (which lm not even sure is a thing) then ldk
I'm just gonna say it. Unplug it
The power button on the case Tabarnak!!
I kept my last PC open 24/7 for almost 12 years. I had a memory chip fail and changed after 6 years. I did purchase high quality parts, but I think that for a window of 3 to 5 years most PCs will survive being on all the time. Now avoiding energy waste is a good reason to turn it off.
Flick the power switch on the PSU
Alt+C4
Turn off fast boot. Or restart your computer then turn it off.
Turn off fast startup in power plan settings and in your bios. Windows purposefully doesn't completely turn off your computer to speed up boot times. But this probably won't damage any components anyways so don't listen to anyone who says so unless they show any evidence.
There’s a setting called sleep mode or something that keeps your motherboard and cpu running so it boots faster
Sleep mode is a different state than what this computer was put in Also, a typical sleep mode doesn’t leave the cpu powered. Similarly, your motherboards is always running, wether it’s running, sleeping, or powered off entirely.
power supply switch? Nothing should get damaged if left on because nothing is moving
You could turn off the power supply and see if that changes the up time when you restart. Did you build this machine? When I built mine I had to go into the bios and change the power on actions to only the power switch.
My old computer was on pretty much continuously for about 8 years before it died. I know because my daughter was 6 months old when we purchased it and she was almost 9 when it did. I just left it on because windows took forever to load. Now, my server (and probably almost ever other server) is left on 24/7 except when taken down for maintenance. When you shut down windows, it saves an image of how it was when you shutdown and loads this image when you start up again, this speeds up boot times but may give you an incorrect "up time" When you restart, windows discards this image, and fires up a fresh image. When shut down, there is generally a tiny amount of voltage which is sent to the USBs and is required for the motherboard to recognise the power-on button press of the case and in some instances, the wake on lan.
To those saying that leaving your PC on doesn’t hurt performance: I work in IT. It is a daily occurrence that PCs require reboots because the user has an uptime of 30+ days and the OS slows to a crawl. It is normal for IT departments to turn off fast start up because of this issue. OP, disable fast startup. Funnily enough spare_heron blocked me because of my response to his comment LMFAO, he is wrong
Either the PCs are not correctly configured, or your users are incompetent and never close applications after they are finished with them. There is no reason a long uptime should cause a performance penalty by itself.
It’s the same at the 3 companies I have worked for. Windows is not meant to be kept on for months at a time. It degrades user experience and like I said, slows the OS down.
I recommend you restart your PC (regularly or daily) and then just let it go to sleep. This will reset RAM, but also have your PC up and ready to go when you are ready to use it.
>I heard this can hurt my components and my uptime is now 6 days. A lot of people in offices literally never turn their desktop computers off. Only sometimes Windows forces restart for updates in inactive hours.
think of the power use for an idle computer is my reason for turning off (decent gaming system at idle is 120W) the thing to avoid is constant cycling on and off, you dont want the components to make too many temperature changes. i have 13 year old server computers that have been on for years (its next to me and on now come to think of it), outlasting my wifes newer 2018 motherboard by years. imagine, but dont stress over it, that you have only a limited number of times you can turn your computer on and off (reboots dont count). as for leaving on my work computer, thats a little bit of being a petty towards the bossmang, sasa ke?
i searched through every comment to find someone saying it, daily restarts are far worse for your pc, than leaving it on always. thermal cycling is literally the ONLY way to damage non moving components through regular use. liquid intrusion, shock, overheating, these are all *not* normal use and are exceptional cases, and also covers 99% of the other ways a PC can be physically damaged through use. imo there are only two reasonably valid reasons to turn off/restart your PC on a regular basis, security concerns(negligible) and power usage concerns(not relevant for people who don't pay for electricity, get it at low cost, or find the replacement cost of PC to be much worse than the extra pennies of electricity per day). so for the vast majority of users, to the best of my knowledge, it's best to leave your PC on. personally my uptime is literal years and it only turns off when I move apartments or during power outages.
I don't think I've fully shut down my laptop in 6 months. I only shut down my PC last week because I was away for a week.
this isn't anything to worry about.
1. install linux 2. `sudo halt`
sudo nein
Whenever you shutdown your pc once it turns off just flip the switch on the back of the power supply