Are You Restarting Your Computer the Right Way?

Did you know that there's a right way, and several wrong ways, to reboot (restart) a computer? It's not an ethical dilemma — one method ensures that problems don't happen and a myriad of others are risky, at best.

You certainly could reboot your computer by powering it off and on, swapping out the AC power or battery, or hitting the reset button, but each of those methods is a bit of a "surprise" to your computer's operating system.

The result of that surprise could be nothing if you're lucky, but more likely it could cause issues from file corruption up to the very serious problem of a computer that won't even start!

You might be restarting your computer to get to Safe Mode but a common reason is that you're probably restarting your computer to fix a problem, so be sure you're doing it the right way so you don't end up creating another one.

To safely restart a Windows computer, you can usually tap or click on the Start button and then choose the Restart option.

As strange as it may sound, the exact method of restarting differs quite a bit between some versions of Windows. Below are detailed tutorials, plus tips on some alternative, but equally safe, ways of restarting.

Before you get started, remember that the power button in Windows typically looks like a vertical line extending out of a full or almost full circle.

The "normal" way to reboot a computer running Windows 10/8 is through the Start menu:

The second is a little faster and doesn't require the full Start menu:

The quickest way to reboot Windows 7, Windows Vista, or Windows XP is through the Start menu:

You can also use the Ctrl+Alt+Del keyboard shortcut to open the shutdown dialog box in all versions of Windows. This is usually only useful if you can't open Explorer to get to the Start menu.

The screens look different depending on which version of Windows you're using but each of them gives the option to restart the computer:

Windows 10 and 8: Choose the power icon on the bottom right of the screen to find the Restart option.

Windows 7 and Vista: Select the arrow next to the red power button in the lower right-hand corner of the screen, and choose Restart.

Windows XP: Click the Shut Down... button and then Restart from the dropdown menu, followed by OK.

You can also restart Windows through Command Prompt using the shutdown command.

​shutdown /r

The "/r" parameter specifies that it should restart the computer instead of just shut it down.

The same command can be used in the Run dialog box, which you can open by pressing the WIN (Windows) key with the R key.

To restart a computer with a batch file, enter the same command. Something like this will restart the computer in 60 seconds:

shutdown /r -t 60

You can read more about the shutdown command here, which explains other parameters that specify things like forcing programs to shut down and canceling an automatic shutdown.

Be very careful if you see the option to reset something. Restarting, also known as rebooting, is also sometimes called resetting. However, the term resetting is also often used synonymously with a factory reset, meaning a complete wipe-and-reinstall of a system, something very different than a restart and not something you want to take lightly.

See Reboot vs Reset: What's the Difference? for more on this.

It's not just Windows PCs that should be restarted in a certain way to avoid causing issues. See How to Restart Anything for help rebooting all kinds of technology like iOS devices, smartphones, tablets, routers, printers, laptops, eReaders, and more.