Get APLawrence.com by RSScold boot
That's a boot after powering the machine off as opposed to just rebooting. It's not a "power cycle" (just shutting the poor thing off because it is unresponsive and then immediately back on).
Note: with some modern hardware, the only way to do a true cold boot is to remove the power cord. With laptops, that obviously won't do it either.
Cold boots can fix problems that a warm boot never will. The reason is partly that chips retain information: they don't instantly return to blank slate or default condition. The other value is due to heat, which can adversely affect chips. Sometimes a completely dead machine can be resurrected at least long enough to get backups just by letting it fully cool down. In extreme cases, a little extra cooling can be miraculous: I've seen double dog dead hard drives rise to duty after spending some time in the refrigerator, and a table fan blowing on a motherboard has kept more than one system from crashing under load (that's a very temporary stop-gap that shouldn't be left in place for long, though I had a client who ran several weeks that way)..
How long does it take for a dying computer to cool down? I recommend taking at least a half hour break. That will also serve to calm you down so that you can plan your best course of action should you be able to get the machine up and running again.
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