I recently got my first desktop PC with a dedicated hard reset button. I pressed it once without knowing what it did, and when the display went off, I assumed something had gone wrong. I then pressed the button repeatedly and eventually switched off the power when the screen still didn't return. When I started the computer again, the bootloader showed an error about an unexpected or forced shutdown, but everything appeared normal after restarting. Could repeatedly pressing the reset button have damaged the hardware or corrupted anything?
2 Answers
Your hardware is almost certainly fine. The reset button simply forces the computer to restart, and pressing it several times doesn’t usually damage the motherboard. It’s best not to keep pressing buttons when you’re unsure what they do, though.
The main risk is data corruption, not physical damage. If the computer was writing to a file or updating something when it was reset, that file could have been damaged. Since the system started normally afterward and the message was only about the forced shutdown, you probably don’t have anything to worry about. Use the reset button only when the computer is completely frozen.
It was sitting at the lock screen, so it probably wasn’t actively writing anything important.