Inside the brain of a Geek: Did you reboot?

“Did you reboot?”  It always throws me when I get asked that question.  I’m a Geek and rebooting is Geek 101.  But my answer to his questions was “No.”  I had broken a Geek commandment. I did as instructed and was torn between want my problem fixed and not wanting it to be a so simple.  The reboot didn’t solve my issue but it gave us a fresh start the made finding the problem easier.  This experience made me think, what do my client think when I ask that question?  Do they understand why rebooting is important?  I’m hoping this will answer a lot of question about why Geek’s ask “Did you reboot?”  I promise no geek speak just an analogy to help you better understand the process. 

Image your computer as a daycare.  Now image your software and programs as kids in that daycare. The day starts off smoothly with children being dropped off with instructions to behave and to play nice.  But as more children arrive the conflicts arise.  PowerPoint is trying to save a presentation but Adobe is hogging the hard drive.  Firefox got a new upgrade and now Java is refusing to be her friend. No one wants to play with IE because he never passes the memory.  Word borrowed a DLL from Windows 7 and now he can’t find it.  Several hours of this and even the best children are shrieking errors and moving slowly.  Now just imagine this daycare 10 days from now?  This is exactly what is happening on your computer every day.  Some of us have a few kids in our daycare and they get along most of the time while others are beyond capacity.  What would a reboot do?  Put all the children down for a nap, put everything back in its place, a quick cleaning, empty the memory, and a few seconds of quiet.  

Below are five signs that the kids are being unruly and you need to reboot.

1.  Programs running slow

2.  Programs locking up or freezing

3.  Newly installed hardware not working

4.  Overall system sluggishness

5.  Programs not starting or working properly

Just for fun!

Below is a YouTube link to a video called “IT Crowd - Have You Tried Turning It Off And On Again?”  IT Crowd is a British sitcom about a two socially awkward IT guys.