I also lock my PC anytime I walk away from it. shortcut is the windows btn (dunno the actual proper name haha) + L.

Edit: The reason I lock so much is so nobody accidentally presses a button or messes with the mouse and causes catastrophic deletions or copies data somewhere, etc etc. As well as if someone asks if I can "record this real quick" when they aren't paying me, I can say "my computer isn't ready to record and takes a bit to get going". White lie ;)

restarting is fine and no problem...powering down and back-up again over and over is not good for your system

"There's no real reason to shut down a computer UNLESS either: 1) Power usage is an issue 2) You have been told to restart because of an install/update 3) Something has gone seriously wrong. " #4 should be: "Unless common sense is involved". In my opinion it's just reasonable to turn the thing off, when I've stopped using it for the day. If the machine is locked, not hibernating, doesn't the HDD spin all the time (they used to)? They last for a certain amount of hours, and a week of spinning in vain is clearly off from it's active life span, is it not? One excuse for not shutting down is that those usually get broken during the boot,but it's a lame excuse I think. In the tube-display era having only the display switched on 24/7, even though the PC was off, could cut the life span of the displays by 30-50%. I don't know how it is with the LCDs. If a big state office, with thousands of computers was caught having PCs running 24/7, it would be accused for wasting tax payers money and straining the environment. Carrying the tiny responsibilities starts from each of us. We're sucking the globe dry anyway...(stops preaching, slightly blushed).

Mine's either fully off or on. We don't need no stinking sleep mode!

+1

If you've finished with your PC for the day - shut it down, unless you are running a server.
Stop wasting energy!

Exactly.

Being a mere mortal with a "proper" day job, I switch it on when I get home and off when I go to bed.

Weekends are different, I'll switch in on in the morning and it will be on all day.

I don't lock it because I'm the only one in the house who even goes in the studio, apart from when we're writing lyrics/doing vocals.

The only time I do leave it overnight is when I'm doing a full backup (which I should do more often )

CakeAlexS


If you've finished with your PC for the day - shut it down, unless you are running a server.
Stop wasting energy!

Or unless you run scheduled overnight backups, defrags, virus scans, update-fetching etc........

I do all of that at night while I sleep. Scheduled and all that.

Then you are not finished! If you are lucky enough for these processes to give you an option to run another program after they complete (most good backup apps should for instance), you can then run shutdown.exe. Or investigate how to use batch files, or wait till the next day.

CJaysMusic


Sleep is for the weak!!!  When your PC goes to sleep, I'm pretty sure it releases ram and other things. The only thing i have set is a screen saver so my screens do not burn out, but my pc stays on, unless i turn it off.

I keep my PC on for days at a time. sometimes even for a week and i never had any problems starting Sonar or windows explorer. I do make a point of restarting it every so often, as this is good for the PC.

CJ

Same here except that I put my monitors to sleep rather than use a screen saver.