A crash-only software is a computer program that handle failures by simply restarting, without attempting any sophisticated recovery.
[1] Correctly written components of crash-only software can microreboot to a known-good state without the help of a user.
Since failure-handling and normal startup use the same methods, this can increase the chance that bugs in failure-handling code will be noticed,[clarification needed] except when there are leftover artifacts, such as data corruption from a severe failure, that don't occur during normal startup.
[citation needed] Crash-only software also has benefits for end-users.
No matter how an application terminates (be it a clean close or the sudden failure of a laptop battery), the state will persist.