Gadget FAIL? Try turning it off and back on again in 27% of cases

Ever taken a screwdriver to the innards of a beloved, dying gadget in the hopes of breathing new life into it? Well you shouldn’t bother according to the Gadget Helpline, as in many cases there is a much simpler solution; switching it off and back on again.

In March the Gadget Helpline asked 1,000 flustered callers to try manually rebooting their hardware, and in 274 cases the problem was fixed. That’s over a quarter of gadget-related problems, or 27.4% for those not up to the maths.

“It might seem like the simplest piece of advice you can give someone with a faulty gadget but removing the power source from electrical devices, waiting five seconds and then turning gadgets back on resolves a remarkably high number of technical issues,” says GadgetHelpline.com founder Crispin Thomas.

“In many cases people tend to think that restarting their device while the power is still supplied is sufficient to fix a gadget problem but in certain scenarios that isn’t enough,” says GadgetHelpline.com I.T. Director Nigel Coward. “A soft reboot means that rogue data could still be stored in memory, potentially continuing to cause system instability. Performing a ‘hard reboot’ on the other hand by removing the battery ensures that the system memory of the device is entirely reset to its default ‘just switched on’ state and tends to solve a wide array of problems.”

Looking for gadgets for geeks and nerds, then take a look at That Sweet Gift. 

For more tips for the technically-inept, visit www.gadgethelpline.com.