Rebooting

Restarting (or rebooting) your computer is like making your bed.

When you first get in a freshly made bed, the sheets stay relatively neat. But as the night goes on and you toss and turn, the sheets get more and more tangled up, to the point that you need to make the bed before you can effectively use it again. It seems like this is what happens when I use my computer.

My work requires me to manipulate large HD video files (5 or 6 GB each) for long stretches of time, and to switch back and forth between multiple files all day. While this works well enough after a fresh restart, the longer I work with the vids, the more likely they are to exhibit start delays and choppy playback. The memory storage allotments have tangled up like the sheets on my bed, requiring me to restart. But I hate restarting (since I often have several windows open) and always postpone the inevitable.

What would be great would be if there was a way to remake the bed (=restart the computer) without having to leave the bed (=without having to close all the current programs). If there was a button I could push which would straighten out the memory storage just like someone lifting the sheets off of me and straightening them out without making me get up first.

Why doesn't this exist?  Or if it does, what is it called?

FWIW I currently use a Dell laptop PC with 8GB RAM and 500GB hard drive running Windows 7.