On 25 Feb 98 at 19:49, William Hornkohl wrote:

> When I talk to someone from tech support, and they tell me to
> change something ,they usually say I have to restart the computer.
> They say to press the reset button ,sometimes press alt-ctrl-del
> twice and sometimes they say it has to be a complete shut down for
> ten seconds (or more). Can someone explain the difference between
> the three  restart methods and why one would be better (or
> necessary) in any given circumstances.

  Ctrl-Alt-Del is software-controlled process.  It is able to save a
value in memory that causes the POST RAM test to be skipped.  It is
inaccessible if the machine has got to a state where it cannot
process keyboard interrupts.

  The reset switch controls the signal on a pin to the CPU.  WHen you
press and then release the switch, the CPU jumps into its startup
routine (same place as it goes when startup power has stabilized).
The initialization routines will try to reset devices, etc, but they
may not always do an entirely thorough job.

  Power off - wait - power on means that every part of the system is
starting fresh.  Specifically, there are some kinds of configuration
settings in NT that will only get reloaded from disk in this scenario
-- a simple reset is not enough.

David G