cold boot verses restart

[hazelnut]

Under what circumstances is it better to use a cold boot as opposed to a restart?

[Andavari]

Under what circumstances is it better to use a cold boot as opposed to a restart?

That's terminology used by some antivirus vendors years ago when dealing with some memory resident viruses.

 

A cold boot is when turning off the computer for at least 60 seconds, according to some old F-Prot Antivirus documentation. It either is or used to be the recommended way to get a virus out of the system memory that antivirus software can't deal with. Although I don't know if simply restarting does the same.

[hazelnut]

I was talking to someone yesterday who said they had a few problems with their video card sometimes if just doing a restart.

[Admiral Ross]

I was talking to someone yesterday who said they had a few problems with their video card sometimes if just doing a restart.

Sounds like a video memory problem. Doing a cold boot will completely clear out the memory. With a restart sometimes the memory isn't refreshed properly. Same thing goes for system ram as well.