complete reboot vs choosing shutdown/restart

[dsingpiel]

my supervisor wants us to shut down and reboot our XP computers before leaving each day.  I've been going to "shutdown" and choosing "restart" rather than actually shutting down and pushing the button to restart.  Now I'm in trouble.  I thought I was doing the same thing, just more efficiently.  Is there really a difference?

[Jonas Wauters]

A restart only restart the OS.
A shutdown shuts everything off including HDD, RAM, Network card,...
I hope that was what you are looking for.

Jonas

[2k_dummy]

Yes, there is a difference. Most people, like yourself, don't know. During a working session various files loaded into memory "as needed". Windows will arbitrarily keep some of these loaded because it determines that they will be needed again and again. So rather than reload them over and over, windows simly doesn't unload them. When you choose restart, Windows restarts the OS but does not necessarily unload everything from memory. When you choose shutdown, everything is cleared from memory and only the OS and startup items are loaded on reboot.

[patio]

Plus over the course of the year that extra 38 seconds a day on the clock will really add up...

[2k_dummy]

At $15.00 an hour, that is $39.57 a year, assuming two weeks vacation and not on overtime.

[Deerpark]

Yes, there is a difference. Most people, like yourself, don't know. During a working session various files loaded into memory "as needed". Windows will arbitrarily keep some of these loaded because it determines that they will be needed again and again. So rather than reload them over and over, windows simly doesn't unload them. When you choose restart, Windows restarts the OS but does not necessarily unload everything from memory. When you choose shutdown, everything is cleared from memory and only the OS and startup items are loaded on reboot.

Uhh what?
Windows doesn't support restarting only the OS. When you do a restart in Windows you do a complete shutdown of the OS and then restart from scratch. The memory is cleared and the BIOS goes through its duties just like if you were starting from a shutdown state. Even if the memory wasn't cleared at a restart, the "new" copy of Windows doesn't know what files were mapped where in the previous session and the old data is effectively useless and will be overwritten with new data.
The Linux kernel supports closing the current kernel and starting a new one, (effectively restarting only the OS) but I've never heard Windows should support this feature.

[Jonas Wauters]

Deerpark,
What are you saying that there isn't a difference between Shutdown and restart in windows?

Jonas

[Deerpark]

Basically yes, as far I know there is no difference between shutting down and then powering back up and doing a soft reboot. Except that a soft reboot might be easier on the hardware in the long run. (Whether this true or not is not completely clear.)

Think of it this way, if windows was able to keep things in memory when you did a reboot, you wouldn't need to save your data before restarting.