Has anyone heard of this "trick"?

I once had an issue with my desktop computers NIC card.



After a power surge, my router was fried and I had no other alternative but to connect my modem directly into my desktop to get a connection.



I soon discovered that it wouldn't get the IP address assigned to me by my ISP.



I called up tech support and the guy over the phone suggested shutting down the PC and disconnecting the AC power cord.



He then suggested holding in the power button of the computer for 10 seconds and plugging in the AC power supply cable and powering on the unit.



After all this, I attempted a connection again and it worked!



Can anyone explain to me how this might have worked?



The phone service technician said it drained all remaining power from the motherboards capacitors that held some corrupt setting in the NIC card and erased it somehow, allowing us to make changes after powering the unit back on.



I see how this is plausible but I want a second opinion.Has anyone heard of this %26quot;trick%26quot;?
No this is true. Computers have a high level of capacitance to enable them to retain data between power blips and frequency cycles. This charge can remain for many minutes. The motherboard also remembers faulty components and locks them out draining the charge gives you a cold boot which looks at everything afreshHas anyone heard of this %26quot;trick%26quot;?
You would have connected anyway by just a simple reboot or by unplugging your Modem for 30 seconds and rebooting.Has anyone heard of this %26quot;trick%26quot;?
That phone service technician is a moron.



All you needed to do was run



ipconfig /renew



and ti would have solved your problems. It was because of the ip address leasing that you didnt have an ip, there was nothing to do with %26quot;memory stored in the capacitors%26quot;



Had you waited an hour or so, you would have recieve a new IP. Heck, your diagnostic when you tried opening a webpage should have said that you had a bad gateway. When you said try to fix connection, it should have picked up a new one for you anyway.



I would get that technicians name and get him fired so he doesn't continue to spread stupid across the planet.



It is not plausible at all. First off, there are very NIC's that have their own memory (which is the ONLY thing you can get electrons floating around in in post shut down, i will explain that after). Unless you paid $150 for your NIC, then i HIGHLY doubt that you have memory on it. So that is definitely not it.



As for charges sticking in capacitors on the mobo. No. The very second these capacitors lose power (when the computer restarts is long enough), it causes a loss of charge. They dont %26quot;stick around%26quot;.



Now about the ram. The ram is where the electrons can stick around, but only in 1 case. You must flash freeze the ram and super cold temperatures and pull it WHILE the computer is still running. Once the computer is turned off, the ram loses all its charge and it becomes a clean slate. Police can use this technique to dump your ram and try to piece it together to see what you were doing in your most recent computing session.



The capacitors in the power supply are a bit more retentative (which is there that flush of extra power comes from post unplug). If you disconnect the power supply from the mobo directly, it will completely lose power, almost instantly. You can see this by watching the light in the motherboard.Has anyone heard of this %26quot;trick%26quot;?
He is following a long standing tradition amongst clueless tech support. Stall, delay, reboot.



All he did was tell your computer to reload its IP configuration, the HARD way. You could have simply disabled and re-enabled the connection. Out opened its properties and selected Support then Repair. Or you could have used a command line tool %26quot;ipconfig%26quot;



It is like going to a mechanic because your car is out of gas. He suggests you let the car sit in the driveway for a day to %26quot;let all the fumes out%26quot;. Then remove the engine and gas tank, and let them sit in the driveway for a week to ensure there are no more fumes it it. Then reinstall all the parts and put a gallon of gasoline in the tank. When all you needed to to was simply put more gas in it.



Here is an alternate way to do what that tech told you. First open a command window. Now stand up, twirl around three times. When are are done click your heals together. Now type %26quot;ipconfig /renew%26quot; in the window and hit enter. Now stand up again and twill around three more times. See I told you spinning in circles helps your computer :)