system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Why are so many tech problems solved by turning things off and on again?
gpt
Poor explanations so far so here goes.

ELI18:

There's Non-Volatile storage (A hard drive for example) and Volatile storage.

Non volatile storage is able to persistently store data by hard-writing it to for example a block in flash memory.

Volatile storage works more directly with electricity. Each bit has a capacitor, this is what makes up the data in RAM. These capacitors "leak" very very fast, and so when they lose power they will immediately leak until empty, where data is lost.

Programs use RAM to store data that may be used frequently, because using RAM is much faster than pulling from the hard drive. 

Programs aren't perfect, and frequently make errors. It might store data it thinks it hasn't stored but it has,  creating memory leaks meaning things slow down because there's less memory.

Restarting the machine clears the RAM, and as such clears the errors the program has caused.


ELI5:

You have a sink. You wash the dishes every now and then.

Sometimes, a bit of food comes off and goes into the food filter at the plug hole, but the water still drains so it's okay.

Eventually there's too much food in the filter and the water is taking too long to drain. You pull out the filter and clean it, and the water now works fine.

The sink is your PC. The tap is a program. The water is data. The filter is memory. The food is programs making errors.