[Coco] OT -- PC needs TWO Shut Downs

[KnudsenMJ at aol.com]

In a message dated 4/1/06 3:41:29 AM Eastern Daylight Time,  
robert.gault at worldnet.att.net writes:

>Supply a few more details! What EXACTLY happens during the first  shutdown? 
Nothing.  Actually, I misspoke -- the screen goes halftone while the  little 
shutdown/restart/standby menu displays in center screen.  As soon as  I click 
"shutdown", the menu disappears and the screen returns to normal -- as  if 
nothing had happened.
My second shutdown always works, tho sometimes the power-down and image  
display don't (see below).

>Does  the system hang during shutdown requiring the reset button?
Nope.   There has *always* been an occasional failure to display  the 
farewell image (after the "ta-dah" sound) and kick off the power relay, but  just 
killing the UPS manually gets a clean shutdown.  That is, I am not  penalized 
with a dcheck or any error messages on the next day's boot-up.   It seems the 
shutdown has completed OK internally, just doesn't kill the  power.  
 
And the image display is always a flaky proposition.  Officially,  Win98 
should display one image during the "ta-dah" sound, then flash a second  image 
just before total shutdown.  The first one has never displayed, at  least not 
since early on when I substituted one of my own photos (and yes, I got  the size 
right, and my 2nd photo does display correctly whenever the power shuts  off 
OK).

>  Does it completely shutdown and then restart on its own? 
Nope, that's a trick Linux plays on me sometimes, but not Windows :-)

>Does  this behavior always happen or only after running certain  programs?
I'd say that whatever apps I run don't make a difference.  I *could*  try 
booting up and immediately shutting back down to see if it goes on the 1st  try.
 
I could ALSO try hitting Ctrl-Alt-Delete to see what procs are running  
before the 1st try, then check again after the 2nd, to see if anything got  
terminated.

>  What motherboard, memory, video card, audio card, etc. are you  using?
Creative SoundBlaster motherboard, 450 MHz Celeron, built-in SB Live sound  
(very fine), and some Oriental video card with a big-name chipset  (Invidia?) 
with 64M of video RAM.

> If this is recent behavior, did you recently install a new  program?
Pretty sure it was not correlated with any new app installations.  Or  with 
the one time I visited MS's updates website, and got some improvements and  
some no-so-improvements.

> Any  recent system updates?
Nope -- see above.

>Have  you checked BIOS settings or looked at Device Manager for any  
problems?
Not recently.  Might the Power Management have some effect?  I've  noticed 
that often Windows "forgets" to blank my screen and hibernate, even  though it's 
set to do so.

>  When's the last time you checked for a virus or spyware  infestation?
At least once a week, nothing found.  Norton AV, AdAware, Spybot --  all they 
find are the usual browser cookies, low-level threats.

>I've not exhausted the list of things to check but at least  answer the 
above >questions.


OK, just did.  One other thing -- I get a lot of "icon rot", where  after 
running an app, many files will show the wrong icon type.  I know  there's a HD 
cache where Windows keeps these, and you can refresh them by  deleting that 
file, but I've never done that.
 
Sometimes I wonder if all these problems are symptom of flaky RAM, and bits  
are getting flipped here and there.
Thanks, Mike K.