There is one thing that every person in the world knows to do when their computer is acting up: reboot. Examples:

• The IT Crowd on BBC used it as a main joke.
• We used to have a commercial on from Insight Cable that told you to unplug everything, reboot, and plug back in, before ever calling tech support. I guess they would’ve had you do all that anyway.
• I’ve been asked it a dozen times by help desks all over the place.

That is a HORRIBLE thing to have to do. Why? IT DOESN’T FIND THE ROOT CAUSE OF YOUR PROBLEM.

Your operating system and your software are really just bunches of files. In Windows, you do have the registry, but by and large, even Windows is just a bunch of files. Am I the only one to think that if something isn’t working right either:

a. There is a file that has something wrong with it. b. There is something wrong with my hardware. c. There is a bug in my software that is affecting me.

If things were right, they would work. If things aren’t right, they won’t. This idea that we should just restart is nothing but a Band-Aid to get you to shut up and leave the helpdesk alone. I wouldn’t restart my car if it started acting up. I wouldn’t restart my AC unit if it wasn’t cooling correctly. I wouldn’t restart my clocks if they quit being accurate.

Restarting is awful. You are much better off, in the long run, to try to find the answer to your current problem. 9/10 of the time, you will find it just from a quick Google search. The other times, you can call support, who will certainly Google it first, just like you did, but they may have internal documents that you don’t have access to. If they can’t fix it, I would suggest rebooting then, and seeing if it works. If it does, then fine, but if it happens again, call back and refuse to reboot. If they can’t fix it, you can find other software.