You’re likely familiar with the soft reset, switching something off, then on again, but on the rare occasion when your iPad needs a hard reboot it will pay to be prepared.
When is it Necessary?
A hard reboot is generally only needed when the device becomes unresponsive or the screen goes permanently black, otherwise simply turning it off and on again will suffice for most minor glitches. However, you won’t lose any actual data from doing this, so don’t hesitate to try it if other solutions aren’t working.
Instructions
Here are the steps to restarting your iPad:
Step One
Press and hold the Power and Home buttons simultaneously for roughly ten seconds.
Step Two
A bar will appear at the top to saying “Slide to Power Off.” If you’re just trying to turn your device off and on again, let go of the buttons and swipe the bar. Otherwise, ignore it and keep holding until the screen goes black and you see the Apple logo appear. Now you can let go of the buttons. Your device should go through the normal process of starting up and be ready for use again shortly.
Other Options
This should clear out almost any minor system error, so if a problem persists afterwards it’s likely something serious. The most sure-fire way to fix severe software issues, such as corrupted files, is “Restore to Factory Settings.” This can be done simply on a computer by syncing your device with iTunes and pressing the “Restore” button in the summary window, then follow the on-screen instructions. Be warned, however, that this will delete all the data and settings on your iPad, so make sure you’ve examined all your options and backed up your data.
Hopefully you’ll rarely, if ever, need any of this information, but if worse comes to worse you should be able to get through anything short of an actual hardware issue on your own now.
