Which is better? Leave computer on all day or start up several times a day

[BarbaraMN]

Running windows XP at home, using dial-up, virus check and firewall

Recently switched to XP from W98 where I left the computer on all day, with
a screensaver running all day. This new computer I have been turning off
and on several times a day and not running a screensaver. Is all that off &
on switching going to cause a problem? Thanks

 

[Jupiter Jones [MVP]]

Barbara;
It is generally not a good idea to power on/off several times a day.

Leaving the computer on 24/7 may be better for the electronics of the
computer, but powering off saves electricity etc.

Either leave it on 24/7 or power it off only when it will not be used
for several hours such as overnight.

 

[TCEBob]

Most computers are able to respond to commands from the operating system. Rt
Click on the desktop and pick Properties/ Screen Saver. Go to Monitor Power (a
misnomer) and set the system to Hibernate after, say, 1 hour. If it doesn't
hibernate, set the monitor off in 20 mins and Hard Disks off in 30. The computer
will still eat electricity but at a much reduced rate. The computer will last
forever powered up but the monitor is like a $200 light bulb and eventually will
get feeble. Screen savers are ok for short periods but letting one run full time
is making both the computer and the monitor age and eat power.

rs

 

[Barbara]

Good suggestions from TCEBob. I'd leave the PC on all day after you change
the configuration as discussed in the previous post. You can turn it off at
night if you want, but if you're running a good personal firewall there
shouldn't be any problem with running it all the time -- except that you
want to make sure that the exhaust fans are large enough to suck the heat
out of the box. Also make sure that holes in the PC where the fans exhaust
are not flush up against any type of furniture or other obstruction. If you
have cats, inspect the in and out holes monthly to make sure they are not
clogged with cat hair. (Ask me how I know.....

 

[BarbaraMN]

Thanks to all for your suggestions. I appreciate it.

 

[Unknown]

Reputable manufacturers do extensive tests to insure their products meet life
expectancies. It does no harm whatsoever to power on and off. As a matter of
fact in large corporations users are required to power their systems off each
and every time they leave their office. ( Even for lunch) It saves the
corporations thousands of dollars yearly in electrical bills.

 

[TCEBob]

Agreed. But I had the impression that BarbaraMN is running the system at home.
The money saved can be displaced by the inconvenience of booting every time;
that's for her to decide. A computer idling with disks off and monitor off
should consume a small wattage, maybe 40?

As I don't run and have never been in a large corporation, I accept what you
say. But I'm willing to bet that anyone with a door on his or her office turns
it on in the morning and off at night. And if I'm taking down $80k gross am I
going to get an award for saving the company $20.00 in computer electricity?

rs

 

[Bruce Chambers]

Greetings --

That's utter nonsense. You've absolutely no real experience
supporting computers in a large business or government environment,
have you?

The time a piece of hardware is _most_ likely to fail is during
the power-up or power-down process. If you'd any serious experience
supporting large numbers of computers, you'd know this.

Further, intelligent enterprises running large scale networks
insist upon the computers being left on at night, so that virus scans,
application and patch installation via SMS, backups, etc., can be
scheduled and accomplished without affecting worker productivity.

The savings in electricity costs generated by powering off the PCs
prove miniscule compared to the costs of otherwise unnecessary repairs
and the lost productivity caused by scheduling/performing virus scans,
application and patch installation via SMS, backups, etc., during
business hours.

Bruce Chambers
--
Help us help you:



You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on
having both at once. - RAH

 

[Bill Stillman]

As both a home user, laptop owner and business network manager, I recommend
that you do not use a screen saver for the following reasons.
1. It will burn up your monitor about six times as fast as not using one.
2. Depending on the particular screen saver, the more graphics and
animation, the more resources your computer will be using, both running the
screen saver and having it in the background to turn on after a period of
time of non-use.
3 As us using a screen saver on a laptop, do not. a typical high animation
screen saver like the aquarium type, will cause your processor to heat up
and if you did not make sure that both the intake and exhaust ports for the
fan are completely unobstructed, viola, dead laptop. I have responded to
several calls where the first thing I see is that the laptop is sitting on
some sort of soft material and has sunk into it blocking the air ports.
Several office machines have been so obstructed that the obstruction is
either so heat dried as to make it a fire hazard.
Just my take...

 

[Bill Stillman]

Oh, forgot,
I leave both my home and office machine running 24/7 as I need to due to my
job. BUT I do turn off the monitor when I leave them un-attended for more
than an hour. Been running 24/7 for three years now.

 

[Rick \Nutcase\ Rogers]

The bit about large corporations is totally 100% incorrect. They leave them
running all the time, for the exact reasons that Bruce has given. I do not
personally know of any large corporation that has their employees do
anything other than logoff at days end. For that matter, I've seen employees
get lectured, and had their continued employment threatened, for either not
logging off properly or for shutting down. Both actions inhibit proper
network administration.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers aka "Nutcase" MS-MVP - Windows
Windows isn't rocket science! That's my other hobby!

Associate Expert - WinXP - Expert Zone

 

[Ron Martell]

Running windows XP at home, using dial-up, virus check and firewall

Recently switched to XP from W98 where I left the computer on all day, with
a screensaver running all day. This new computer I have been turning off
and on several times a day and not running a screensaver. Is all that off &
on switching going to cause a problem? Thanks

Turning a computer on and off multiple times a day is pretty much the
worst thing you can do.

Two main reasons:

1. The microchips and the circuit boards inside a computer are
composed of multiple layers of different types of materials. When
power is applied these components heat up and when the power is shut
off they cool down. All materials expand when they are heated and
contract when they cool down. And different materisls expand and
contract at different rates. This repeated expansion and contraction
will cause stresses at the points where these materials join because
they are expanding and contracting by different amounts. Repeated
stressing will eventually cause the equivalent of metal fatigue in
these materials resulting in failure of the join.

2. The hard drive in a computer is powered by an electric motor. All
electric motors are under the greatest loads and stresses when they
are first powered up, and that is when they are most likely to fail.
How often have you seen an electric motor fail while it was running at
normal speed? It does happen, but far more likely is that the
electric motor (washing machine, refrigerator, starter motor in your
car, whatever) will fail when it is turned on and power first begins
to flow. The more often an electric motor is powered on and off the
more likelihood there is of a failure during startup.

My basic motto is either "on and off once a day" or "leave running
24/7" - the pros and cons of each are pretty much equal.

Good luck


Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

"The reason computer chips are so small is computers don't eat much."

 

[Unknown]

On the contrary. I am not talking about the host system in a corporation. I am
talking about the hundreds of PC terminals in all the offices. As Rick below
mentions, the user logs off and after logging off he powers off his system
(PC).

Greetings --

That's utter nonsense. You've absolutely no real experience
supporting computers in a large business or government environment,
have you? Wanna bet?
The time a piece of hardware is _most_ likely to fail is during
the power-up or power-down process. If you'd any serious experience
supporting large numbers of computers, you'd know this.
The most like time to fail in this mode is early life failures And they

will fail whether powering on and off or not.
Systems are tested for power on off cycle reliability.

 

[Unknown]

You are correct when you state the most likely time a motor will fail.
However, you fail to mention that when a hard disk is not used for a period of
time the motor is shut down. This is also true especially on CD drive motors.
Therefore, the motors are shut down and powered up a lot more often than you
think. Leave your system idle for a while and then when you go back you'll see
that the HD motor MUST be powered on.

 

[Hootie Bethesda]

-----Original Message-----
Greetings --

That's utter nonsense. You've absolutely no real experience
supporting computers in a large business or government environment,
have you?

The time a piece of hardware is _most_ likely to fail is during
the power-up or power-down process. If you'd any serious experience
supporting large numbers of computers, you'd know this.

Further, intelligent enterprises running large scale networks
insist upon the computers being left on at night, so that virus scans,
application and patch installation via SMS, backups, etc., can be
scheduled and accomplished without affecting worker productivity.

The savings in electricity costs generated by powering off the PCs
prove miniscule compared to the costs of otherwise unnecessary repairs
and the lost productivity caused by scheduling/performing virus scans,
application and patch installation via SMS, backups, etc., during
business hours.

Bruce Chambers
--

Can you say "specious"? The fact that most failures occur
during the power-up process doesn't mean that failure will
never happen otherwise, or that the power-up process, per
se, directly contributes to failure. There is no reliable
*empirical* data in existence that I know of to support
your contention. If you know of some, please provide
references. And make sure that you understand that
empirical data does not consist in quoting someone else's
unsupported assertions.

As an aside, distribution of patches and virus updates
across large networks is often done at boot time, and if
it's not, the installation ususally requires a reboot, so
lost productivity is not an issue. Of course, if you had
both a brain and experience, you'd know that.

 

[Ron Martell]

You are correct when you state the most likely time a motor will fail.
However, you fail to mention that when a hard disk is not used for a period of
time the motor is shut down. This is also true especially on CD drive motors.
Therefore, the motors are shut down and powered up a lot more often than you
think. Leave your system idle for a while and then when you go back you'll see
that the HD motor MUST be powered on.

You can configure the power management so that the hard drive does not
power down.

CD drives are variable speed so are constantly speeding up or slowing
down while in use. They maintain a constant linear velocity of the
data track past the read head which means the drive spins faster when
reading from the inner portions of the CD and slows down as the head
moves toward the outer edge.


Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

"The reason computer chips are so small is computers don't eat much."

 

[Guest]

All I want to know is what is better for my computer, to shut it down at
night, or leave it running 24/7 ( a techition told me to leave it on so the
schecualed tasks can do their jobs ) or turn it off so it cleans it's self
when it starts up ( thats what another person told me ) can anyone help? I'm
very confused.

 

[Rick \Nutcase\ Rogers]

Hi,

There is no one good answer. I agree with your techie person, not just
because of scheduled tasks, but for another reason. Most hardware failures
occur when the components are stressed. The most stressful part of any
hardware component's life is when it is initially powered on and a surge of
electricity goes rushing through the components and everything begins to
move causing friction and component-damaging heat. I avoid this by not
powering down, but rather leaving everything running in low power state. The
heat is constantly dissipated by running fans (any hint of a squeak or grind
and a fan should be replaced immediately).

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Associate Expert - WindowsXP Expert Zone

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org

 

[joust in jest]

This question comes up often. As you have found, there are two views on this
issue, and the adherents of each view are approximately equal in number. The
core of the argument revolves around cost -- there is an energy cost
(electricity) to leaving your computer on continuously, and there is a
wear-and-tear cost to shutting your computer down every day and restarting
it the next day.

Although I personally practice "twenty-four / seven", I advise against that
practice if you do not have a good battery backup that will shut your
computer down gracefully in the event of a power outage.

What MOST knowledgeable PC users agree on is this: If you do not leave your
computer on 24/7, it is not wise to start up/shut down your computer
multiple times per day -- this method maximizes wear-and-tear while
concurrently negating energy savings (your computer uses more electricity to
start up than during some hours of being on but idle).

steve

 

[Guest]

Well as you may all know by now im a WIN 98 guy.
I have 3 PC's runing WIN98 and they have not been shut down since the day
they where pluged in.
My thought on the matter has nothing to do with what none of you are saying.
I think the trouble starts with the heating up and cooling down of the PC.
Motherboard expanding and contracting making lose connections on all its
circuitry is the main cause I think.
I run good fans and keep the room cool.
The pc im on right now is almost 8 years old and and have had no down time
at all. ( Knock on wood, LOL )
I may be wrong.
but thats my story and im sticking to it ( lol )