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Restarting fixes a lot of electronic woes

It’s proving to be the solution to a great assortment of electronic maladies: the restart. You turn something off and then, after a minute or two, turn it back on again. Or, when an on-off switch doesn’t exist, you unplug, wait, and plug back in.
Cable modem photo
The line at the bottom supplies power for this cable modem.


It’s proving to be the solution to a great assortment of electronic maladies: the restart.

You turn something off and then, after a minute or two, turn it back on again. Or, when an on-off switch doesn’t exist, you unplug, wait, and plug back in.

It’s so simple, yet I often forget to go that route, and instead opt for more complicated fix-it efforts.

These are some of the things that a restart has fixed for me in recent months:

An iPhone that wouldn’t connect to a cellular signal.

An iPhone with a battery that drained superfast. (To restart an iPhone, you hold the round home button and the power button at the top edge at the same time for several seconds until a power-off slider appears; then you slide.)

A printer that refused to print.

A digital video recorder that suddenly wouldn’t record.

A Wi-Fi router extender that wouldn’t activate.

A profile that wouldn’t come up on the family’s shared desktop computer.

And the cable company’s Internet modem. Its settings can be called up via web browser on a computer, but the “can’t be found” message kept appearing. I fussed with cable connections and computer preferences, and even hooked up another computer to no avail. Then, I finally remembered. Try something simple. It worked. 

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