[BartSimpson]

No kidding, this is what I got to see about an hour ago.

[BartSimpson]

That works out to 98 days.

[Public_Domain]

[DrCaleb]

Is that all?

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[DrCaleb]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

That works out to 98 days.

Funny too, because I got curious and looked at a few of our Win 2012 servers, and they have been up less time than your desktop! 78 and 81 days.

But our 2003 Fileserver . . .

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[BartSimpson]

The machine I was dealing with is a Dell 780 OptiPlex, 4GB RAM, W7.

Five days without a reboot on this POS is an eternity. Even better is that after the reboot about two hours ago now it's still downloading and installing updates!

[DrCaleb]

Our desktop machines are Win7, HP 8100's. But our updates are pushed out, so we have no say when they happen. Usually every Thursday.

[Regina]

I do a restart about once a week. Usually after a driver update, scan, defrag or CC Clean. Other than that I just sleep it.

[andyt]

Can you elucidate the less hip of us? What happens when you don't reboot often? I mostly just sleep my puter unless an update says I need to reboot.

[DrCaleb]

andyt andyt:

Can you elucidate the less hip of us? What happens when you don't reboot often? I mostly just sleep my puter unless an update says I need to reboot.

Some programs will 'leak' memory. That is, when they request from the system some memory in which to run, when they are done with it they don't always give it all back. They might keep a little bit because they were programmed wrong and the programmer didn't take everything into account, and didn't write a 'clean' program. For programs that run on a schedule, like something that checks email every few minutes, this means that the amount of system memory will slowly get smaller and smaller because it thinks some system memory is still in use by the program that requested it, or the program that requested the memory kept it to pass it off to another program for it to use. It's hard to tell the difference, so that's why it occurs. So the system will have less and less fast system memory (RAM) to use, and will start swapping fast system memory with slow 'virtual' memory on the hard disk.

This makes the system really, really slow while main memory is swapped to disk, and back again once the program finishes. Most recent Windows operating systems can clean up memory and reclaim that 'leaked' memory back, but they aren't 100% effective.

The way other operating systems work, they don't rely on the program requesting memory to give it up on exit, they will just take back whatever was allocated to the program when it terminates. This lets the operating system run for much longer between reboots and much more stably.

When you reboot, everything is set to zero. Everything is set to it's full potential, and the system runs fastest.

[BartSimpson]

andyt andyt:

Can you elucidate the less hip of us? What happens when you don't reboot often? I mostly just sleep my puter unless an update says I need to reboot.

Two things about this practice:

1. The longer you leave a modern Windows machine on the longer you run the risk of critical services stopping without notice. Security and anti-virus updates can fail to run and then the notifications for those failures will also fail. More noticeably, the print spooler service can stop and prevent your ability to print.

2. If you leave your computer on when you are not near it the machine is highly desirable to be used for a botnet. The easiest way to prevent this issue is to simply shut the machine off when it is not in use.

2a. If you're paranoid (for good reason) as I am then you'll also physically remove the network cable from your desktop when it is not in use to prevent anyone from trying to wake your computer remotely. Note: Even if wake-on-LAN is disabled the machine can still be started remotely per the documentation that Edward Snowden revealed.

[andyt]

Thanks for the info.

Why do those services stop when the machine is left on?

So sleep mode doesn't prevent bot net use I guess?

I don't need to remove the network connection. Who's going to go after my puter that has that sort of capability? If NSA wants to have a look at my puter, let em, I've got nothing of worry on it. Doesn't mean I support government spying, just that I'm not worried about it.

[BartSimpson]

The services stop as interrupts occur and then when the IRQ clears the service doesn't resume - and that's usually sourced to unsigned software being installed on the computer.

When I was at Intel we did experiments with computers that were exclusively loaded with Microsoft signed software and the machines could be left on indefinitely with no loss of service.

But add a nonstandard driver like for a Logitech keyboard and then the machine needs to be rebooted daily.

Sleep mode not only does not prevent botnet activity, it camoflauges it.

https://www.ejabberd.im/mod_greylist

[Regina]

$1:

But add a nonstandard driver like for a Logitech keyboard and then the machine needs to be rebooted daily.

Didn't know that. Probably why my keyboard G keys won't work after a sleep. I usually just unplug the USB for a second and it returns to normal. Wasn't always like that so I wonder what changed.

[DrCaleb]

Regina Regina:

$1:

But add a nonstandard driver like for a Logitech keyboard and then the machine needs to be rebooted daily.

Didn't know that. Probably why my keyboard G keys won't work after a sleep. I usually just unplug the USB for a second and it returns to normal. Wasn't always like that so I wonder what changed.

I had a D-link wireless card in one PC that was notorious for doing that. I lost a drive on that PC once, and could never again find the drivers for that card.