restart和back to square one

restart 是中性的意思，不偏正面或負面
根據上下文，才會看出 restart 好不好，或無關緊要。
1. 中性 After the program is installed, the computer will restart.
2. 負面 Should the computer restart again and again, you have a big problem.
3. 正面 If my life could restart, I would remove all the mistakes.

back to square one 重頭來過
幾乎都意含：前面的通通白忙一場
英文解釋："to go back to the beginning, after a dead-end or failure". 遇到挫敗，重新來過。
例子：
After spending six hours on the intake we realized that there was nothing wrong with it, so we went back to square one.

Now we're back to square one. 之類的用法，已經很生活化。和源頭的遊戲用語大不相同。

If you "restart" something that has been interrupted or stopped, or if it "restarts," it starts to happen or function again.

I do like DSW's answer for "back to square one," which is very informative.

First, let me talk about "back to the square one". It came from board games, popular in the 19th and early 20th centuries, with numbered squares similar to Snakes & Ladders, where a player landing on a square carrying a penalty might have to go "back to square one"

From the origin of "back to square one", you can tell, when you got "back to square one" in a board game, you would have to go back to the starting point and start it again.

However, when you use "restart", you DON'T always get the chance to go back to original point. After all, our life can only go forward, never backward.

Also, we can use "restart" like:

Can you restart the engine?

All it means is just to start the engine again. It has NOTHING to do with going back to wherever the starting point is.

2014-07-01 22:29:04 補充：
About Snakes and Ladders:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snakes_and_Ladders