can u damage your computer by not shutting down properly

[changsterdj]

i always tell people to click start and shutdown if they want to use my computer, but one of my friends, just hit the power switch off anyways

could there be any damage?

 

[Slaymate]

I guess there's always the possibility, but more than likely it's fine. If you made any configuration changes it may not remember them, say if you changed your Desktop Background it will use your old one instead.

 

[patonb]

Check your bios... Mine has an option that when the power buttons pressed, it'll shut down windows..... I think its my bios.. but anyway there are settings to power off when button is pressed.

 

[S0ULphIRE]

depends on what kind of shutdown you do. If it's the press and hold one, then yes you could lose some data.
However, if you just press it once and the computer starts shutting down by itself, then that's fine.

 

[changsterdj]

he did the press and hold....

what kind of data can be lost?

 

[Lexluethar]

No data will be lost if applications are closed, but processes that are in memory that will not be cleared properly. If done on a regular basis will eventually cause Windows to probably throw a BSOD.

It is not a good practice. Doing every once in a while won't hurt anything, but a regular basis MAY (again not 100% of the time) cause windows to crash and throw a BSOD upon reboot.

 

[up-smash]

If your computer isn't prone to errors or anything like that, I wouldn't worry about it...

As everyone else has been saying, every once in a while is fine... and if things (applications, processes, things saving) were functioning while your friend hit the power button... there could be some problems.

 

[Harper]

Apart from what has been said all ready, I do know that yanking out the power cable for the PSU can short your system

 

[ricanflow]

In the control panel you can pull up the power options and make it to where pressing the power button just gives a prompt to shutdown and still requires a mouse click.

 

[Fairuza]

In the days of early computers, shutting down, by pulling the power was an absolute no-no. You could do irrepairable damage to hard drives this way.

The newer operating systems, such as Windows XP (and beyond) deal with premature shutdown, by auto-recovering the data from temporary files. Applications, such as MS-Office Word are a good example. You don't lose data when you lose power.

However - don't do it. Shut the thing down properly. Just because it's not such a big deal these days, doesn't mean you shouldn't get into the habit of shutting it down correctly.

Computers in general are not designed to be turned off like that.

In theory, it can endanger your hard drives. If the head hits the disk, without parking properly, you can damage it permanently.