Chromebook Troubleshooting for Students

How to Restart/Reset a Chromebook

adapted from Acer USA Tech Support

You may want to restart your Chromebook if you are having problems with it or if it is performing slowly. You can reboot your device to clear your RAM, resolve any memory leaks, and improve performance. Use any of the methods below to restart your Chromebook.

Note: there is a difference between restarting and resetting, though this difference has become less obvious as computer hardware/software has improved. A restart means telling the computer's operating system to suspend all activity and safely power off all of the hardware. A reset means forcing the computer's hardware to power off without giving the operating system a chance to suspend activity. In the past, this was a potentially dangerous thing to do as most computers (including many today) used hard disk drives with physical storage (spinning platters that recorded information magnetically). The components in these hard drives are extremely sensitive and cutting off power to them unintentionally could harm the drive. Since many devices now use solid state storage (and more advanced components in general), this has become less of an issue. However, the safest way to power off and resume a device's operation is to restart it rather than reset it.