Sometimes, the easiest solution can be the best one, and for PCs, that’s just giving it a reset.
Computers can be frustrating, especially if you don’t know why something is going wrong. One minute, the site you’re browsing is just fine, and the next images and videos won’t load. Or maybe an app was running normally, but now it’s suddenly taking 95% of your GPU’s resources when nothing was changed in the app. There can be many reasons something is acting up, but often, that meme from The IT Crowd rings true—sometimes, you have to turn it off and on again.
While all devices are fairly complex these days, PCs are especially so. With so many different components and combinations available, it’s common for programs to have hiccups. But as you continue to troubleshoot and try to fix the issue, nothing seems to be working. That rage sets in—you know, the type where you just know this program is supposed to work, why isn’t it working, and what on earth is wrong with it?
Most of the time, whenever I run into this issue, restarting the computer solves the problem. In fact, when writing this article, I ran into mysterious issues twice that were solved this way. The first time, Firefox just did not want to let me pull a tab into its own window—something that was never a problem before, or even a problem an hour before it cropped up. After making sure my mouse was working and no key on my keyboard was accidentally pressed, I restarted the computer, and Firefox started working normally again.
The second time, I booted up a game, but it did not recognize the controller for some reason. Eventually, after restarting the game and playing with my reWASD settings, it recognized my controller—but it was registering the buttons incorrectly. It made no sense whatsoever, and since it made no sense, I restarted my computer before I tried to tinker with my settings more, and all the controller issues were solved. Had I continued to mess with settings, there was a very real chance I would have actually broken something that a restart couldn’t fix.
So the next time someone asks you for help fixing something, insist that they restart their PC before anything else, and you may have just saved yourself a world of headaches.
