What happens if you don't turn off your computer for a long time?

Many people want to keep their computers on all the time for various reasons such as the convenience of being able to use their computer at any time without having to wait for it to boot up and being able to access their computer from anywhere in the world.

To answer this question, a user decided to test running a Windows 10 computer continuously for 1 week and shared his interesting findings.

Windows remains stable when operating for a long time

Many people think that when the computer runs continuously, errors and problems such as memory leaks and slow computer operation will appear. However, this person's computer still runs smoothly, no BSOD (blue screen of death) problems occurred during the 1 week of testing.

However, there are some minor issues that appear such as WinRAR program will hang when the user tries to cancel a file transfer process and video games will show slight stuttering. The cause of this problem may be due to the fact that it takes longer to load resources into RAM.

Disadvantages of leaving your computer on all the time

While this test shows that Windows 10 can run stably for long periods of time without shutting down, there are some downsides to leaving your computer on all the time, such as higher electricity bills, the computer getting hotter and fan noise can be annoying, the operating system and applications not having a chance to fix minor problems themselves, and not getting the latest Windows updates.

According to experts, periodic computer shutdowns are still recommended to ensure optimal performance and system updates.

Alternative solution

You can use sleep mode to enjoy the convenience of having a computer always ready without the drawbacks mentioned above. The computer will boot up much faster than the traditional way and by enabling the 'wake-on-LAN' feature you can still turn it on remotely.

Isabella Humphrey

Update 04 September 2024