January 28th, 2025

My electric toothbrush was acting up, so I tried to reboot it

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.

Author

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.

10 comments

  • Ivan Kljajic 6 hours ago

    Cheers. This reminded me I need to buy a burner toothbrush to unclog the top speaker of my smart phone.

  • Sharquee Yeilufiche

    It’s clear you never had the “pleasure” to have to reboot a sex toy, probably the last thing on anyone’s mind in the heat of the moment…

    • Dmitry

      I guess, sometimes an electric toothbrush counts as one. It just depends on who’s the actual user. And with bad cooling it might even add a lot to ”the heat of the moment”, I guess.

  • Christopher Warrington

    I recently had to reboot my laptop’s charger by unplugging it from the wall. No, I could not unplug it from and replug it in to the laptop. No, a different laptop from the same manufacturer didn’t work. The charger itself had hung and had to be power cycled.

  • Ron Parker

    Just yesterday, my electric toothbrush - a Waterpik Sensonic - locked up. Quite literally - if I pushed the power button, the LEDs would flash briefly, it would make a small "clunk" sound, and it would shut off again.

    Upon examination, I found a tiny Phillips-head screw in the center of the alignment hole where it sits on the wireless charger. Removing that screw allowed me to pop the bottom of the handle off, whereupon a coil attached by painfully thin wires fell into my hand. From there, I had to gently pry a couple of little plastic tabs away...

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    • ω 1 day ago

      As a seasoned toothbrush mechanic, let me set it straight. Just like how you’d never skip on oil changes for your car if you want it to last, you can’t ignore regular maintenance for your toothbrush. We’re talking about bristle alignments, plaque filter replacements, and keeping that battery in top condition. The last thing you need is a sonic bristle blow out at 25,000 strokes per minute.

  • Piotr Siódmak 2 days ago

    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 1 day ago

        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)