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Haven't shut down comp in 6 months...is that bad?

W

Wekiva

Senior member
Our son was born 6 months ago. This has led my wife to work part time which has her home most of the time. We have also become much more familiar w/ wandering the house at 3 in the monring. All this considered...we are hopping on and off the computer all the time...day and night. The result is that we never turn it off. And I mean NEVER. It has only been turned off for 2 days since my son's birth 6 months ago and that was due to a possible virus problem. I have my hard drives shutting down after 1 hour and my monitor shutting down after 30 minutes. My sig should include system specs. Is this the way to go or should we be turning it off/on each night...or once a week.
 
It's not really an issue. Most computer components are designed to run all the time, and if your not overclocking or running it in a poor environment there's not much to worry about. It will probably affect its lifespan a bit, but that's about it. I know of pc's running for 5+yrs straight!
Our son was born 6 months ago.
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OH YA- congrats!!🙂I have a 1.5 yr old myself.Gotta love it!
 
I think the only thing you may have to watch for are the fans for the major components like your cpu, your graphics chip and your motherboard chipset (if you have one). If one of those go out then it's possible those chips could overheat. My computer is always on as well.
 
My computers run the same way and i have never had a problem. One has been running like that for almost 2 years and nothing has ever crapped out on it (except having the reload the OS occasionally).
 
When I say "turn off" I mean turn off and leave off. I have restarted my system many times during the 6 months...during software install/updates, etc.

What do you all use for your hard drive/monitor turn off time?
 
I can't answer this question without knowing what operating system you are running.

If you are running an iteration of NT (win2k and winXP included) you will be fine.

If you are running a UNIX/Linux system, you will be fine.

If you are running 95/98/Millenium then you actually should reboot periodically since those OS's have all sorts of nasty memory leaks, not to mention memory heap problems.
 
basically summed up--- don't worry about it.

My rig has been on for 1 year. I never use any sleep modes. When I'm away from it for a long time or overnights I will physically turn off the monitor but that's it. Everything else is 24/7.

If you are worried just check all your fans to make sure they're still running.. and blow the dust off every now and then.. maybe reboot if you have to.. you should be great

ripthesystem
 
I don't think I've ever gone 6 months w/out replacing or upgrading a CPU/mobo/vid-card or hard drive. 6 months of up time would be impossible for a super upgrader like me.
 
All my *nix boxen stay on 24/7. The only time they ever go down is when i have a power outage. Which is usually ~30 days or so. Whenever there is a storm around here it takes out trees and we lose power. 🙁
 
When I'm away from it for a long time or overnights I will physically turn off the monitor but that's it...If you are worried just check all your fans to make sure they're still running.. and blow the dust off every now and then.. maybe reboot if you have to.. you should be great
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I second this advice!!!😉
 
I checked my power usage with an amp probe, and I was running five computers at the time (no monitors were on) and they were pulling 4 1/2 amps at 115 volts. Thats around 517 watts, or about half a KW hour.

As far as computers bursting into flame, I was sitting right beside my dual PPro (P6DNF m/b) when it started smoking.
The psu header on the m/b melted. I did some research on the net, and found that is a common problem with the P6DNF, and there were two reported instances of the computers actually bursting into flame.

Wires now soldered directly to m/b, and no more worries 😀
 
theres gotta be 1000 pcs sitting in this building and i doubt they're ever off more than the 1/2 second it takes while rebooting. monitors aren't off either. they want to know how to save the company money... i'm amazed no one thinks that the default image shouldn't use the opengl screensaver and it should turn the monitor off.
 
Frequent start up/shutdown cycles are generally harder on solid state components than leaving them powered up all the time. With mechanical components (spinning platters in the HD, fans...well, that's pretty much it, eh?) startup/shutdown cycles wears on them as well, but so does continual use. The balance has to be found somewhere. Having the shutdown time on the HD for every 5 minutes will kill it faster than leaving it on all the time. 15 min, same. 30 min...maybe? Personally I have my power savings stuff set to 'off'. I turn off the monitor when I leave, the HD's are spinning unless the computer is off. Been doing it that way for years and never had a problem until that godforsaken IBM drive made it's way into my house.

--Mc
 
If you are running an iteration of NT (win2k and winXP included) you will be fine.

If you are running 95/98/Millenium then you actually should reboot periodically since those OS's have all sorts of nasty memory leaks, not to mention memory heap problems.

That's been very true for my machine. I could never leave it on for days with 98, but now with 2K I never need to shut it down (unless it freezes).

If you are worried about overheating, you can use a monitoring program that will shut down the machine if it goes about a certain temp.
 
The only time my server (winXP or 2k) has been shut down in the past year was for:

Hardware removal / installation / maintenence (cleaning)
Power outages
Clear BIOS when trying to O/C

Id say the computer has not been physically off but maybe 12 times in the past 12 months

This is my ICS server too, and it has a diamond ISA modem in it...that modem is the same as the system...when the system is on, the modem is connected.... talk about rocksolid!!

LoRdAccord
 
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