kony said:
Hit <CTL><ALT><DEL>, or power cycle it, or buy a little
panel mount switch [..]
Many thanks for your interest! Unfortunately, I' m not so experienced in
tasks like them!
You might have a friend who owns a soldering iron? It is a
pretty easy thing to make, especially so if you take the
switch cable out of an old system so you don't have to spend
tedious time wading through electronics parts catalogs
finding the corrent pin plug and contact inserts.
If you can find the wire with the connector already on it,
you merely have to solder it onto the new switch, drill the
hole in the case bezel (pretty easy on soft plastic), and
plug it into the motherboard as you would've had to do
anyway if the case had a reset switch.
One thing I failed to mention is that it's important to be
sure there is enough space between the front plastic bezel
of your system and the metal chassis wall behind it, so you
can choose a switch that is short enough to fit. Otherwise
you'd have to drill a second hole in the metal for
clearance, which would mean disassembling the system first
to keep metal particles off of everything.
I heard that now many new cabinets are without the reset
button and that when we have to reboot the system (for example, in case of
crash), we have to push the power button instead of the reset button: is it
true? But, in this way, don't we risk damaging the pc?
Many older ATX, OEM system (as well as newer ones) don't
have a reset switch either. Always try <CTL><ALT><DEL>
first as it is preferred to reset that way rather than power
cycling.
Power cycling every now and then is not "usually" a problem,
but the initial inrush current to parts is a more stressful
time for them, and in particular if your hard drive were
dodgy and about to fail, turning off the system and letting
the HDD spin down might mean it's gone forever. With
servers, it's generally thought that you should try not to
turn them off, though today's hard drives are a lot better
than those of yesteryear, by now that might be drifting
towards an urban legend.
I wouldn't worry about it much though, you shouldn't need to
reset the system with a reset button very often at all - if
you do find you're needing to, there is probably some other
problem that should be fixed instead of trying to add the
reset button.
