Solved Why restart works ? Technical reason ?
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Hello there,
We as IT people used to face so many scenarios in which we take one of the important troubleshooting step, which is Restart, either it can be computer, router etc.
Yes, so many times it works.
Being a technical guy, I would like to know technical reasoning, to be aware of and answer if any user asks.
On other hand, some times I don't know the reason for some specific issue, user just wonder on those issues and asks why it happened, and I don't have answer, is that normal or happens with you ? if so, is that okay ?
Appreciate you responses !
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You can dig into the issue (sometimes), but frequently in the SMB, it's not worth the time. If it's a reoccurring issue, of course you investigate and solve it, but a one time deal, Ask your boss if they want you spending hours and hours trying to solve a problem that might never occur again, assuming you can even solve it.
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In a business you do not waste time fixing something that will cost more to fix than it does to get around.
You always shoot for the least cost route.
If that is a reboot, then do it.
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@Dashrender @JaredBusch
That sounds reasonable reply, in fact I am doing it by default, I mean not spending much time if it's not very production or repeated issue. Just wanted to know if I am not alone that don't know the reason for some specific issue
Appreciate if you can elaborate the first query, which is Restart ?
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@openit said in Why restart works ? Technical reason ?:
@Dashrender @JaredBusch
That sounds reasonable reply, in fact I am doing it by default, I mean not spending much time if it's not very production or repeated issue. Just wanted to know if I am not alone that don't know the reason for some specific issueAppreciate if you can elaborate the first query, which is Restart ?
I did. because it is cheaper for the business. That is the only reason. I do not care why or how that works.
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@openit said in Why restart works ? Technical reason ?:
On other hand, some times I don't know the reason for some specific issue, user just wonder on those issues and asks why it happened, and I don't have answer, **is that normal or happens with you ?
yes, this is normal. Happens all the time.
if so, is that okay ?**
Is it OK that it happens all the time, yes, but only if by all the time means - something different is leading up to it happening each time. I.e. today someone is in word and it freezes, tomorrow someone else freezes in Chrome, and the next day yet another while printing.
If you have a single person with many issues - that's a pattern, you should investigate. But if it's seemingly random, as long as it's not frequent, made note and move on.
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Technical reason is that reboot clears current state of the software and start from the scratch again. Running software generates junk over time that usually sits in memory, or worse, software suffers from memory leaks, Firefox is a poster child here. Rebooting wipes all that.
And if you want to get really technical, you can even mention cosmic radiation. IBM did a research on that at some point, and they concluded that a PC with 256MB of RAM was going to experience memory errors due to radiation once a month. Bump memory to 8GB and you have one error a day, statistically speaking of course. All that does not apply to ECC memory, but most desktops will not have that.
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I'll often have users do a restart, but if the issue is recurring, then I'll take the time to try to find the root cause.
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@openit said in Why restart works ? Technical reason ?:
Yes, so many times it works.
Being a technical guy, I would like to know technical reasoning, to be aware of and answer if any user asks.
Because it takes the system to a known state that, presumably, is how it got working in the first place. Nothing that has changed in memory is retained.
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@openit said in Why restart works ? Technical reason ?:
On other hand, some times I don't know the reason for some specific issue, user just wonder on those issues and asks why it happened, and I don't have answer, is that normal or happens with you ? if so, is that okay ?
It's more than okay, it is very often important to the business to not expend large resources to find the cause of something when the cause is likely unimportant and the cost of fixing is so high.
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@eddiejennings said in Why restart works ? Technical reason ?:
I'll often have users do a restart, but if the issue is recurring, then I'll take the time to try to find the root cause.
Instead of re-imaging?
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@scottalanmiller said in Why restart works ? Technical reason ?:
@eddiejennings said in Why restart works ? Technical reason ?:
I'll often have users do a restart, but if the issue is recurring, then I'll take the time to try to find the root cause.
Instead of re-imaging?
What is this re-imaging?
That's one my list of stuff to fix: Develop an image, despite most workstations having different software installation needs.
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@scottalanmiller said in Why restart works ? Technical reason ?:
@eddiejennings said in Why restart works ? Technical reason ?:
I'll often have users do a restart, but if the issue is recurring, then I'll take the time to try to find the root cause.
Instead of re-imaging?
I don't jump straight to re-imaging, I'll spend at least 30 mins fixing first.
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@eddiejennings said in Why restart works ? Technical reason ?:
@scottalanmiller said in Why restart works ? Technical reason ?:
@eddiejennings said in Why restart works ? Technical reason ?:
I'll often have users do a restart, but if the issue is recurring, then I'll take the time to try to find the root cause.
Instead of re-imaging?
What is this re-imaging?
That's one my list of stuff to fix: Develop an image, despite most workstations having different software installation needs.
That's what SodiumSuite is designed to fix.
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@dashrender said in Why restart works ? Technical reason ?:
@scottalanmiller said in Why restart works ? Technical reason ?:
@eddiejennings said in Why restart works ? Technical reason ?:
I'll often have users do a restart, but if the issue is recurring, then I'll take the time to try to find the root cause.
Instead of re-imaging?
I don't jump straight to re-imaging, I'll spend at least 30 mins fixing first.
I'd do triage and determine the likelihood of 30 minutes being useful. Because an image process could be under 30 minutes and more reliable, you want to make that call early.
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@scottalanmiller said in Why restart works ? Technical reason ?:
@dashrender said in Why restart works ? Technical reason ?:
@scottalanmiller said in Why restart works ? Technical reason ?:
@eddiejennings said in Why restart works ? Technical reason ?:
I'll often have users do a restart, but if the issue is recurring, then I'll take the time to try to find the root cause.
Instead of re-imaging?
I don't jump straight to re-imaging, I'll spend at least 30 mins fixing first.
I'd do triage and determine the likelihood of 30 minutes being useful. Because an image process could be under 30 minutes and more reliable, you want to make that call early.
Of course.
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When you deal with third party software, that you dont have alot of documentation and you have to support it, like EMR system, and you really dont want to learn it cause it using old software, for example running on centos 6 so you really dont want to delve in that old stuff, and services load and start but the web app is not showing so you just keep restarting the crap out of it till it works and the hospital can resume activity.
And you have worthless EMR manager, that cannot stand to the developers and tell them fix their shit. cause her experience is diploma degree, but of-course she is an international expat so she gets the job regardless.
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That's nice information.
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@scottalanmiller said in Why restart works ? Technical reason ?:
@eddiejennings said in Why restart works ? Technical reason ?:
I'll often have users do a restart, but if the issue is recurring, then I'll take the time to try to find the root cause.
Instead of re-imaging?
I just wonder, how we can simply jump to re-imaging or reset or re-installation, unless necessary or investigating the issue, it may repeat if cause is not from that computer...?
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@openit said in Why restart works ? Technical reason ?:
@scottalanmiller said in Why restart works ? Technical reason ?:
@eddiejennings said in Why restart works ? Technical reason ?:
I'll often have users do a restart, but if the issue is recurring, then I'll take the time to try to find the root cause.
Instead of re-imaging?
I just wonder, how we can simply jump to re-imaging or reset or re-installation, unless necessary or investigating the issue, it may repeat if cause is not from that computer...?
It "may" repeat, but the chances are extremely low if you have an issue on one machine. More importantly - investigating causes is extremely expensive and generally worthless (we rarely find something at all, and when we do, it is rarely of value.) That something "may repeat" sounds important, but it makes something trivial sound scary.
In real life, 99%+ of issues that we experience on an end user machine are from the end user machine and can be fixed by starting with a clean copy. A good process for this lowers cost and raises protection as imaging fixes many problems that we might not even have known about. Imaging is a much safer process, investigating leaves us often unsure if we've found "everything" and if we've fully fixed it.
So imaging is often where we almost start, because it is fast, reliable, and cost effective for the business. IT always wants to "know what was wrong", but ask the business if this makes sense. To the company, the right answer is the one that saves money, not the one that gets to the bottom of things.
