Can not shutting down properly can harm your computer hardware the installed software or data on your computer?

Answer 1

Incorrect shutdowns, such as pulling the power cable can indeed damage both hardware and software. Especially applications which at the time of the interrupted shutdown were writing data to their configuration tend to become corrupted. Especially if data was being written to the hard disk is this bad for the hard disk. Further any power drop or surge can be damaging to your PSU, mainboard and the rest to a lesser extent.

Answer 2

It is not harmful to shut down the computer 'properly'. There are only really 3 ways to shut it down anyway. One is by going through the Start menu. That is the best way. The other is to use the 'power' button on your keyboard. If your keyboard has that button, not all do. The final way is the power button on the tower. That would be the least usefull method.

Answer 3

Well ... yes and no.

When your computer is running various parts in it it are generating heat, the hard drives are (usually) spinning, the fans are turning, and a variety of other things that can over the long term result in failure are happening.

That said, starting up is generally harder on a computer than running idle, so if you're shutting it down to turn it on again in an hour or so, you're probably not doing it any favors by shutting it down (also, in most designs powering down the computer also shuts off the fans so they won't be drawing cooler air over any parts that are already warm, and this isn't terribly great on most of the pieces the fans are there to protect).

I seldom shut my desktop computer down completely unless I'm planning to open up the case and work on it. I have gone through a couple of power supplies and a number of cooling fans (including one CPU cooling fan and several case or power supply fans), and I've had a hard drive fail on me (though that was probably as much due to age as to leaving it on most of the time). Fans are pretty cheap to replace (getting decent ones in the first place means you probably won't have to replace them as often, but unless you're building the computer yourself you probably don't have much choice in which fans are used). Hard drives are costlier, but if you have a proper backup strategy it's not an unmitigated disaster and it's a good opportunity to replace your drive with a larger one. Power supplies ... those can be tricky. Some major brands use custom-designed power supplies that can't be replaced with an off-the-shelf unit, but if you've got a "beige box" PC, odds are pretty good that you can replace the power supply with a better one for well under $100.

Laptops are a special case. They're REALLY not designed to run all the time, so they should be shut down whenever you're not actively using them and with many types of batteries it's better for the battery to NOT keep it constantly "topped off" but run it down to empty or near empty periodically ... when you're using the computer anyway; leaving the computer on just to drain the battery is probably doing more harm to expensive components than good to the battery.

Answer 4

There is a small chance and if you do it often you can delete a few files or wipe out your hard drive.

Answer 5

For the most part, yes, It can, mostly with laptops, you should let the battery die out to make it last longer (sounds crazy, but its true).