If you’ve ever experienced a completely frozen computer, or even just had to abruptly rush away from it and wanted to shut it down before leaving, you’ve probably held down your PC’s power button. Of course, manually shutting down or restarting your PC occasionally can be beneficial, but only when done via the proper procedure. If your computer isn’t prepared to shut down, you risk permanently damaging it.

Sometimes, cutting power to your PC is an occurrence that can’t be helped, like in the instance of a power outage — though in that case, damage can still be mitigated — or an incurable freeze up. Outside of that, it’s good practise to avoid a forced shutdown whenever possible for a number of important reasons.

The problem with abruptly cutting your PC’s power is that it means your machine can’t perform the usual shutdown safeguards ahead of turning off. Both computer programs and the operating system itself are constantly working in the background, doing things like indexing files, checking for updates, syncing to the cloud and autosaving. If the computer is shut down suddenly instead of closing these processes on its own terms, some of these tasks may only be partially complete, leading to issues like corrupted files and lost data.

The absolute worst time to force shutdown your PC is during an update, when large-scale changes are being made to your computer. Often updates involve deleting key old files and replacing them with new ones; if power is cut in the middle of this, these files might wind up gone forever. If that’s the case, your computer may be unable to start at all, leading you down a troubleshooting rabbit hole.

Though a long-press on the power button can be a source of strife, the button itself has more customizable utility than you might be aware of. In the Windows 11 settings, you can actually adjust what happens when you press it. You can choose to have your PC shut down, go to sleep, hibernate (which is like powering down, but will resume where you left off when turned back on), turn off the display or do nothing — an ideal option for a laptop power button that keeps getting accidentally pressed.

To change what pressing the power button does, you can follow these steps:

1. Open Settings by pressing Windows Key+I.

2. Select System in the righthand column.

3. Select Power & battery.

4. On laptop, select Lid, power & sleep button controls; on PC, select Power button controls.

5. Select the option you want from the pulldown menu next to Pressing the power button will make my PC.