Turning PC on/off from powerbar harmful?

[RZetlin]

I have a friend who turns off the PC and monitor from the powerbar.

My friend would shut down the PC and then turn off the powerbar to power down the monitor and PC.

I advised against using the powerbar to completely turn off the PC and monitor because of the possibility of a power spike.

Is my friend's way of turning off the PC and monitor harmful to the devices?

[Valcrist]

yes it is! Turn off the pc with the power button and THEN turn off the power bar if he must do it that way. The power spike can damage his system.

[Dante Yagami]

Originally Posted by Valcrist

yes it is! Turn off the pc with the power button and THEN turn off the power bar if he must do it that way. The power spike can damage his system.

not only his system, if he has a good power supplies in his case he will be lucky if this only burnt down & didn't reach the chips on his MotherBoard.

[Strider]

actually its safer to keep a computer running for thousands of hours at a time rather than turning it off at night as well since the drastic heat change is often what damages the components inside but yeah, using the power button is not the best idea, atleast during normal shut down and start up the components have some time to warm up/down, you dont wanna do that too fast

[S.SubZero]

The way you typed it, he does Shut Down in Windows (which turns the PC off) and *then* turns off the power strip.

There's no harm in this.

[GCFreak]

I'd recommend he turn it off by using Windows then flicking the switch on the PSU, if he doesn't have one, flick it on the wall :P

[KanedA]

lool, I'm turning (sometimes ) my pc down using my keyboard , of course it shuts down windows first than power

[Valcrist]

The way you typed it, he does Shut Down in Windows (which turns the PC off) and *then* turns off the power strip.

There's no harm in this.

Actually, if the power supply is still on, then the computer is still in stand-by, and therefore will still accept power spikes, and cutting the power directly from a power bar will more-than-likely incure.

[Evil_Neko]

On a related note I have my own question. I built my computer a couple of months ago and ever since I did I have been having a problem with powering down. I use windows XP, when I shut down my old system it used to shut down and turn off, this one however says it's shutting down but does not turn off. I'm not quite sure why, It's possible I messed up a jumper setting somewhere if that could be related (well I DID mess up at least some... the LEDs on the front don't work... I don't care though) the only thing that makes me think it isn't is that *sometimes* it does shut down and turn off properly.

The question is, is it damaging to turn it off via the front power button after telling windows to shut down?

[Kraelis]

Er.. I don't seem to follow. If he shuts down Windows, it's supposed to turn off the PC. It's not in standby, so shutting off the power physically shouldn't be harmful... right?

Sorry...

And it might be damaging to turn it off if Windows doesn't do it itself. It's not like Win98 which actually tells you it's safe to turn it off now. Who knows what's its flushing, or hasn't flushed, at that point in time. I'd think it has something to do with your Windows installation rather than hardware.