Holding the “Power Button” for a while to force shut down your system, or directly plugging out the power supply or directly switching off the inverter/UPS, all these ways of shutting down a computer can be termed as “Improper Shutdown”, Well, will this affect my system’s performance? the answer is “Yes”. Frequent hard shutdowns may trigger data/OS corruption and other minor hardware and software issues, and at the most you may even land with a failed hard disk. [Note: Hard disk failures due to improper shutdown is least probable]
If you are the sole user of your system, you have less probability of damaging it. On the other hand, if your system is being used by many people, say, your family members, kids, friends or if you are running an internet cafe where visitors don’t care about the system as much as you do, then its time to track back on how many times your machine has been shut down improperly. Educate these people to shut down the machine in a proper way.
When and How many times your machine was shut down improperly
Well, tracking back “improper shutdowns” in Windows 7 is simple
1. Click the “Start menu“, type “View reliability history” (without quotes), Click “View reliability history” in the search result
2. Now you can see the “Reliability Monitor” of your Windows 7 machine.
3. Now you can see how many times your system was hard shut-down, and this history will reveal the time when the critical error occurred, and all summary containing the phrase “Windows was not properly shutdown” should reveal things you are looking for.
What exactly is Reliability Monitor
Microsoft defines it as follows
Reliability Monitor is an advanced tool that measures hardware and software problems and other changes to your computer. It provides a stability index that ranges from 1 (the least stable) to 10 (the most stable). You can use the index to help evaluate the reliability of your computer. Any change you make to your computer or problem that occurs on your computer affects the stability index.
The Reliability Monitor is intended for advanced computer users, such as software developers and network administrators.
Also read:
1. How to monitor network usage of individual programs in Windows 7
2. How to Hide a Hard Drive Partition in Windows 7 My Computer Window
