The importance of Logging Off
Many users do not log off when they go home at the end of the day. This is not a good habit. Besides leaving your system open, and accessible to anyone (such as the cleaning person at night), you increase the chance of corrupting your system.
When you are logged in, you have files open, and processes running. Even if you close all of your applications, there are still some of these open and running in the background. So if the power goes out, for example, it takes your system down hard (unless you have a properly configured UPS that will initiate a shutdown). If your system goes down hard, those open files and processes do not get cleaned up like when doing an normal shutdown, and corruption may result.
Another issue, if you are in a network environment, is that you may have resources open on other machines. If that other machine needs to be restarted, or have other maintenance, then someone has to go to your computer and disconnect you, or log you off.
What I do is reboot when I leave for the day. By closing my applications, and then restarting my system, my applications get a chance to clean up and exit. The Windows system gets a chance to start fresh, too. That way the system is up for any scheduled tasks that it needs to perform overnight, but no user is logged in. While there are some processes running and scratch files open, the risk of corrupting data is less than if the user is logged in. It is also up and able to run scheduled tasks, and is ready for me to log in when I get in.
Another concern is that PHP websites using session control can leave the login active if you just exit the browser without logging off. Depending on the length of the session timeout configuration in effect this may leave your account vulnerable to a hacker. Always logout before exiting a website that you need to login to get full access.
Contact us at CCS Retail Systems, Inc. for help with your systems.
Dave.