PCs "Shutdown"

[InsaneRussian]

Well there was one thing bothering me for a while so i decided to ask after something happened to my PC.
You usually shutdown your comp by clicking the "Shutdown Butten" and wait for it to shutdown and then you go away. For me i can either do that or i just simply pull out the cables that lead electricity to my computer. Why i do that is because if i dont the electricity keeps coming and the computer uses minor part of it and never cools down to lvl 0.
So what my question is, can computer be injured if you simply pull out the cables when you dont run anything, i shutdown all programs and pull out the cables pretty much as turning it off just much faster. I can just simply shut the comp down and after pull out the cables, no matter how i do it after i start up the comp i get the choice between normal start and recovery console, today it chose the recovery console by itself and downloaded few files that went missing.
So i wonder how bad is it to just simply cut the electricity to the comp, can it unjure and Soft/hard-ware. And is there any difference between turning it off and the cutting the power off or just simply cutting the power off. Cause both of them lead to choice between rocovery console and normal start.

[baddb0y93]

i used to do that to my old pc and never had a problem and i had alot of programs running couple of games and i just pull the power out the wall and nothing wud happen

[Guyver]

This is a situation that is questioned alot. I do it to my laptop alot. Just hold down the power button and it auto turns off. This works with desktops too!

This is almost like chewing gum to help prevent cavities. We don't really know if it works, but we want to believe it does.

I turned off one of my friends new laptop by just holding the button and he got UBER ticked! He said, "You're never going to touch my laptop again."

So I think it's more of an opinion.

[InsaneRussian]

Well what i've meant was that i don't hold down the butten, i pull out the power cables which cuts the power that streams to the comp which means all actions stop without any warning so to say, cause when you hold down the butten it does the function to shutdown your comp which still does something to save the info or something like that but if you just pullout the cables all actions just disapear so to say since no power is streaming and i wonder if that can injure my computer in any way.

[Guyver]

Have you searched the web? Look around. This forum isn't exactly big time computer savy on that.

[zeekgenateer]

It's possibly damaging. Using equipment in ways unintended will always be possible to damage hardware. This unplugging could have been the cause of my motherboard woes, as my dad does this whenever he finds my computer on. However the motherboard was already partly shot so I couldn't say.

To solve your problem you could just shutdown then unplug the computer. Why your computer won't entirely shut down I have no idea, but the computer does draw power to keep the CMOS powered so it won't have to use the battery. Or a very bad virus (it would have to be written very well). Maybe your computer is a zombie... I have no idea. If you want to be sure to a full reformant and reinstall, and even then it might have an MBR virus, but MBR viruses are rare to fix that you'd use the fixmbr command in the MS repair tool on your XP disk.

Hope that helps.

[187 Phantom]

powering a computer down by unplugging it can ruin your hard drive over time and speed up the process of chip creep.

ur computer most likely has a few programs running in the background that aren't shutting down when windows tells them to, which probably means they are spyware of some sort. so run a spyware check, my bet is you will find a few

[Lexington]

Their should be a Master Switch in the back of your computer which should disconnect all power to it, if it doesnt, you should get it fixed.

[InsaneRussian]

Well i believe you all misunderstood my question.
What i was trying to find out is, if you turn of the computer without unplugging the cables afterwards and leaving it to rest. Will it rest faster or it will rest as much as just turned off computer.
Cause when i turn it off and don't unplug the cables from electricity, the graphic card gets overheated faster then what it does when i had the comp unplugged whole sleeping time which mákes me wonder if there is acctual power drawing from the cables if the comp isn't unplugged.
Other thing was, if i unplug, can it injure the computer if i do so constantly (each time i turn it off). Cause it seems to get better rest so but each time after unplugging i get the choice between recovery console and normal start, which makes me think that maybe there are something running while comp is turned off cause why else should i get the recovery console choice if it unpluging works as turning off while when i just turn off it never comes.

As some say i might have some virus or such, i highly doubt that i do since i have been doing this for about a month and i haven't noticed anything different since i bought this comp which wasn't been so long ago. But still if i had something infected i would notice the difference, even minor once.

So my basic questions are, "What is the differents between turning comp off and turning it off and unpluging?".
for me it's hard to answer cause you'd need to know lots about how comp function which i don't.
The difference which i've noticed were:
Turned off comp: No recovery console choice but graphic card gets overheated faster.
Unpluged comp: The recovery console choice comes but the comp rests better.
So i want to know what the side-effects are of the unpluging and why it rests better when unpluged.

[Felix12g]

Are you letting your computer shut down completely first? It'll be fine if you actually let your hard drives spin down and your computer shut down naturally. If you're just yanking the cables out of the back then yes, that's bad for your hard drives. If you asked this before 2000 I'd probably want to smack you, but these days your harddrive is about the only thing that will really get hurt. It's most definitely not good for your computer and you may start running into corrupted files but hardware wise beyond the drives you should be safe.

If your hardware isn't cooling down sufficiently after shutting down then that sounds like you've got an airflow problem, the trickle of power that's still being used by the computer is nowhere near enough to overheat a video card. And unless you've got a faulty power supply it should be drawing almost nothing.

[InsaneRussian]

Originally Posted by Felix12g

Are you letting your computer shut down completely first? It'll be fine if you actually let your hard drives spin down and your computer shut down naturally. If you're just yanking the cables out of the back then yes, that's bad for your hard drives. If you asked this before 2000 I'd probably want to smack you, but these days your harddrive is about the only thing that will really get hurt. It's most definitely not good for your computer and you may start running into corrupted files but hardware wise beyond the drives you should be safe.

If your hardware isn't cooling down sufficiently after shutting down then that sounds like you've got an airflow problem, the trickle of power that's still being used by the computer is nowhere near enough to overheat a video card. And unless you've got a faulty power supply it should be drawing almost nothing.

Okey good that somebody understands what im saying =)
As i understand from what you've said it's fine if i turn off the comp and then pull out the cable so there is no chance of any power getting into the computer but otherwise it injures the comp. Right, right? Good to get that clear.

Anyhow about that with graphic card, im not sure if it's the symptoms of graphic card being overheated, but what i get is that dark fields on the screens colors start to run green, Spring Green Grass color short lines that constantly moves, few friends said that because of the graphic card is getting overheated. For example if i woke up had my comp running and let it running in the night cause i download stuff then next day in the evening i get this problem, but sometimes even i get this simply in the evening after running my comp about 6-12 hours straight (depends dunno on what). I had another graphic card which burned out and they repalced it with another one, dont know if new or not. But the old graphic card had same sympthoms but was reacting quicker and had lots of green but it was an older graphic card (geForce 7500LE now i got GeForce 7600GT). I dont know guys but it would be awesome if you could help me out with this and tell me waht i can do to prevent this or repair this.