Old Dogs/Old Trick/New Applications

[kaneohe]

Several yrs ago our refrigerator decided to got on a cold strike. It got very cold and started freezing everything. The water filter froze and cracked.
The repairman told me I should have turned the power off and then back on.
Remember the olden days of computers when they often froze up and then rebooting often fixed the problem so even if you knew nothing, you could look like a genius. Since the problem, the refrigerator (so far) has behaved.
..................but this morning, the microwave oven, after accepting the cook time refused to do anything....including cook, clear, etc. Not knowing anything better to do, I pulled the plug and then plugged it in again. Instant success! I know DW's tablet (Kindle) has also had this problem at least once.
So , just FYI, file the secret away just in case.

[MBAustin]

Good point - there are electronics (aka computers) now in just about everything and between imperfect software and electrical glitches, they all can "freeze up" (literally in kaneohe's case). Unplugging will often "clear the memory" and let everything restart from scratch. If battery powered, pulling the batteries can do a similar function.

[aja8888]

Too bad we couldn't do the same with children...

[NW-Bound]

One of my DVD players refused to eject its disc. In fact, it refused to do anything.

A "reboot" via power cord unplug/replug solved the problem. Damn little microcontrollers that are inside everything now (or damn the guys who wrote firmware for them).

[rbmrtn]

So many things now are not actually off when the off button is pressed. Still connected to the outlet they have a trickle charge for the controllers/timers/led display etc. Unplugging will allow it to discharge the memory and reset.