With technology, the right fix is sometimes the easiest

Did you reboot?

“Did you reboot?” Imagine hearing that in the best cartoon, sing-song voice possible around your house. It happens to me on a regular basis.

I am an Information Technology (IT) professional. I’ve been in IT since 1993. In those 31 years, I have seen every possible combination of how broken a device can be. So why then am I so often hearing the words, “did you reboot?” echo throughout my house?

That’s simple. It’s the No. 1 piece of advice I can give. I’ve said it so much that my husband has turned it into the sing-song mantra and says it jokingly for almost every issue we have around the house.

My family has gotten so accustomed to hearing the words, “did you reboot?” that they know they should not ask me for help before trying that one simple technique: Rebooting. In fact, it’s become so common for me that I have even pulled off the highway before because I felt like my SUV needed to be rebooted.

It’s true. Think of the technology that exists in every vehicle manufactured within the past five or so years. Cars are no longer just mechanical, they are moving supercomputers that report diagnostics to the manufacturer, connect to our mobile devices for mapping, music, and a variety of other tools. I can even look in a phone app to tell you statistics from every drive I’ve ever made in my vehicle, so, yes, there are times that it just needs to be rebooted.

Early in my career, I worked at a furniture manufacturer. I learned quickly in that job that much of what I needed to do was to help soothe people who felt stuck because their technology simply was not operating efficiently for them to be able to get their jobs done. There is nothing more frustrating than having a deadline, or worse yet, working on a production line in a manufacturing facility and having technology bring everything to a grinding halt.

Technology is meant to help make us be faster, more efficient, more intelligent, and takes away the rote nature of some processes. The unfortunate reality is, if businesses (and this can apply personally as well), do not keep their technology clean, up to date, and free from malware and junkware, technology can slow us down.

You might be thinking, how does a reboot help with so many common IT problems?

Your internet is slow? Reboot your router. Your smartphone is misbehaving? Turn it off and back on. Your car is not playing music from your Bluetooth-connected device? Reboot your car and the phone.

One reason is computers of all sizes have memory. We can relate computer memory to human memory. We, as humans, have short-term memory and long-term memory. Short-term memory allows us to remember things like what I had for breakfast, that I need to text my mom, that I’m having lunch later with a friend, and routine tasks that help us get through a day.

A computer has a similar type of memory that helps it run programs, like an internet browser, and gives it quick access to data it needs to run that program. That memory, called Random Access Memory (RAM), is volatile and is flushed when the device reboots. You may also hear IT professionals suggest that you clear your cache or cookies. Those are types of memory that helps a device operate more efficiently, but can easily be cleaned, often with a reboot.

On the other hand, our long-term memory gives us access to things that happened in 1985, core childhood memories, and things that we could never forget, like what we were doing when a traumatic event happened. Computers have long-term storage in the form of their disk drives. This is memory that is non-volatile and therefore does not disappear with a reboot.

Having different types of memory on devices helps the devices operate more effectively quickly dumping the short-term memory and anything that’s not needed for long-term device operation but also gives us ability to save long-term for future reference, like your grandma’s top secret cherry pie recipe.

There is a myriad of other reasons why a device reboot often works including the fact that a reboot often allows a device to do its required hardware and security updates. A reboot terminates any processes that might be running into conflicts with other programs or processes. Drivers and firmware, pieces of software that operate each piece of hardware, are also reloaded at reboot.

There are many things that happen when you initiate a reboot on a device. So, next time, before you reach out to that IT professional, or you call your grandson who is “good with computers,” do a quick health check and ask yourself in your best cartoon voice, “did you reboot?”