When someone refers to “booting a computer,” they mean that the computer is booting up and loading all the programs that allow it to communicate and accept commands from the user. There are two main types of reset procedures: soft reset or hot reset and hard reset, also known as a hard reset. A soft reset refers to restarting your computer without completely shutting it down and turning off the power. A hard reset is the process of restarting the computer after it has completely shut down, regardless of whether or not the power loss was intentional. Removing the power also clears the computer’s working memory and is sometimes used as a way to restart the system when it is frozen.
A hard reset involves restarting your computer without shutting it down first.
The term “boot” comes from the fact that when a computer is first turned on, there are no programs loaded and nothing in memory, since random access memory (RAM) cannot store information without power. Computers must use information from an internal non-volatile source that persists even when there is no power to the system. This process is called “booting” as the computer is effectively pushing itself through its own boots to load essential programming. It sounds like such a process might be impossible (as impossible as someone getting up on their own), but the information is stored in a computer on specialized chips and in other ways, so it’s available as soon as power is restored.
A hard reset can be the result of the system being deliberately shut down and power removed. If this is the case, when powered back on, the system will go through the process of reloading all essential programs before it can be used. Since it starts from the beginning, the process can take a while, especially if there are a lot of programs to load, but it should complete in a reasonable amount of time.
If the computer has not had a chance to go through the normal shutdown process, but instead has lost power suddenly, such as in a power outage, the forced restart process is usually preceded by a file check. This is because the file structure might have been corrupted by the sudden shutdown. A check is automatically performed at the beginning of the hard reset to ensure that files are not corrupted before restoring the computer to a working condition. If errors are found, the verification process will repair them if possible or alert the computer operator to the problem. Once the file errors are fixed, the boot process of the hard drive will be completed and the operating system will be restored along with all the essential related files.
