Restart, Reboot, Repower

Restart, Reboot, Repower: a reader asked…

Quick question and hopefully quick answer: If I’m having trouble with my consumer technology – anything really, computers, smartphones, tablets, home automation, remote controls, etc. – what’s the first thing I should do to try to resolve the issue, and if that doesn’t work, what should be my next steps?

Quick answer is the subject line of this article: Restart, reboot, or repower your device. Based on several decades of direct experience, that resolves about 80% of problems with consumer technology. For a computer, reboot; for a smartphone, shut down and turn back on, same for tablets; for home automation, remove power to the device and then power it back up; and for battery powered devices (e.g., remote controls), remove the batteries and put the batteries back in (better yet, insert new batteries). Most of the time, that restores full functionality to the computer, device or item.

If your bit of consumer technology is dead, e.g., not working at all even after this, then most likely it has failed permanently and may need to be replaced. Don’t be afraid to try anything you can think of in this situation, you never know if something can be resurrected. That said, you should consider the cost to your time, frustration, anxiety, and

Now about the 20% that the restart/reboot/repower procedure didn’t fix, and the item is not dead, your next step would be to obtain and apply any updates to the item. For computers, these are operating system and software updates (for any and all installed software), same for smartphones and tablets. If new “firmware” is available this should be applied according to the instructions – this applies to home automation equipment, remote controls and other consumer technology. After applying these updates, repeat the restart/reboot/repower procedure and your consumer technology should be restored to normal functioning. This covers about 80% of the remaining problems (of the 20%), so that leaves (counting on fingers and toes) about 4% of all computer problems that requires a techology professional for further action.

The above is my 80/80/20/20 rule from my 2016 article Tech Quick Fix and futher defined in my 2017 article Simple Fix, and alluded to in various articles I’ve written since then.