January 28th, 2025
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My electric toothbrush was acting up, so I tried to reboot it

Raymond Chen

My electric toothbrush was acting up. The Internet says that I needed to reboot my electric toothbrush.

Pretty much no part of that last sentence made any sense 40 years ago.

My friend who worked on the development of the USB specification once sent me an email that said simply, “Just now, I had to reboot my mouse. Thought you’d like to know.” This is the same colleague who some time later told me about USB floppy drive price discrimination.

A colleague of mine has a cadence sensor on his biking shoes. He received a notification on the sensor app and proceeded to install a firmware update. He made a point to tell anyone within earshot, “I’m performing a firmware update on my shoe.”

Oh, by the way, my attempts to reboot the electric toothbrush were unsuccessful. I had to replace it.

Related reading: I tried to adjust the time on my alarm clock. I failed.

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Raymond Chen

Raymond has been involved in the evolution of Windows for more than 30 years. In 2003, he began a Web site known as The Old New Thing which has grown in popularity far beyond his wildest imagination, a development which still gives him the heebie-jeebies. The Web site spawned a book, coincidentally also titled The Old New Thing (Addison Wesley 2007). He occasionally appears on the Windows Dev Docs Twitter account to tell stories which convey no useful information.

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  • Piotr Siódmak

    Are you sure you rebooted it instead of hibernating? You have to do a hard reboot.

    • Dave Gzorple

      Or have you tried booting it in safe mode? Sometimes third-party drivers or AV software can cause problems with booting your toothbrush.

      • Jacques Hemming

        Hi, I am a Microsoft MVP and I would be happy to help you. Please try runing sfc /scannow on your toothbrush. If that doesn’t work, reinstall Microsoft Windows for Toothbrushes (R)

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