Has anything bad ever really come of not shutting down Windows properly?

[DougoMan]

Because I've never seen anything bad happen and I do it all the time.

 

[pcgeek11]

Yes I have seen corruption to the point of not booting when powered back up. Dipshits at work just turn off the power strip and it tends to really shit things up.

 

[Venom20]

one word: corruption

 

[corkyg]

Windows 7 handles it better than previous editions. Corruption is definitely possible - but if nothing is going on, it's not really likely.

 

[Munky]

In my experience, neither Windows XP nor Windows 7 had any corruption from improper shutdown. That's not saying it can't happen, or that Linux is not more vulnerable to it.

 

[SimMike2]

You will lose unsaved open files.

How do you shut it down? Because with most computers, if you hit the on/off button on the front of the computer, it actually shuts Windows down properly, at least with ATX power supplies.

 

[JackMDS]

There are known case of Kids that fell few floor down from a Windows and nothing serious happened to them.

That does not mean that it is an healthy OK activity.

 

[Steltek]

There are known case of Kids that fell few floor down from a Windows and nothing serious happened to them.

That does not mean that it is an healthy OK activity.

+1 just for the analogy....

 

[Sulaco]

Because I've never seen anything bad happen and I do it all the time.

Can I ask...why? Is it really that hard to click "Shut Down"? Are you under that much of a time constraint?

 

[us3rnotfound]

I have only had corruption follow an improper shutdown when I was testing out an OC that wasn't stable. My feeling is some 1s and 0s got messed up in some crucial dlls and that was all it took to corrupt Windows beyond repair.

Word to the wise: test an OC on a spare image...storage is cheap.

 

[corkyg]

Unless you have an active UPS, it will happen on any power hiccup. If you were not in the middle of doing something, chances are, no noticeable effect.

 

[Cerb]

In my experience, neither Windows XP nor Windows 7 had any corruption from improper shutdown. That's not saying it can't happen, or that Linux is not more vulnerable to it.

I just spent over an hour dealing with just such a problem for a friend (Windows 7). The power went *blink*, and that was it. Windows would fail to boot up. Given the time and symptoms, I speculate that updates were being installed at the time of the unexpected shutdown.

To be fair, my computer was writing files at the time, and came back just fine. Typically, NTFS finds the last coherent state in the journal, gets rid of newer junk, flushes the journal, and then everything is peachy. You need to be writing just the wrong thing at that time to have a real problem, but it can and does screw things up.

Linux, running EXT3, is extremely vulnerable to bad shutdowns. I used to use JFS for this reason. EXT4, however, has been solid, IME.

 

[Nothinman]

Because I've never seen anything bad happen and I do it all the time.

Yes, very, stop that.

 

[Ben90]

Unless you have an active UPS, it will happen on any power hiccup. If you were not in the middle of doing something, chances are, no noticeable effect.

Or a good power supply.

 

[Samick]

When I did not shut down my computer one day my all files from hard drive deleted. And Windows too.

 

[Ben90]

When I did not shut down my computer one day my all files from hard drive deleted. And Windows too.

It didn't delete your files. The index probably just corrupted itself.

 

[DougoMan]

Can I ask...why? Is it really that hard to click "Shut Down"? Are you under that much of a time constraint?

For some reason it sometimes takes a good minute to shut down. I like to switch off the power strip so it doesn't drain electricity at night and do not have a minutes worth of patience late at night for it to do its thing.

 

[pcgeek11]

For some reason it sometimes takes a good minute to shut down. I like to switch off the power strip so it doesn't drain electricity at night and do not have a minutes worth of patience late at night for it to do its thing.

You play you pay.

Remember, no whining when it all goes south on you.

 

[spinejam]

just like drinking & driving -- eventually something very bad will happen!

 

[Emulex]

wow this is moronic. you never ever use the reset button, power down using power switch, or cut power - you wonder why your box is unreliable. seriously folks - don't let your friends do this stuff. and you can change the force timeout on windows 7 if you don't like the 20 seconds default

 

[stevech]

Like turning off the ignition key with the automatic transmission in drive.

 

[Nothinman]

For some reason it sometimes takes a good minute to shut down. I like to switch off the power strip so it doesn't drain electricity at night and do not have a minutes worth of patience late at night for it to do its thing.

Not only does that have great potential to f' your filesystem up, cutting the power like that can damage the hardware as well. Just because it's worked so far doesn't mean it's smart or anywhere close to a good idea. Why do you have to wait for it to finish shutting down anyway? Just hit the button and walk away, if it shuts down in 1min or 2min it has no affect on you then.

 

[TakeNoPrisoners]

It used to be a bigger issue apparently with old versions of Windows. I know in the Windows 98 95 days you really shouldnt be doing it.