[Coco] OT -- PC needs TWO Shut Downs

[Robert Gault]

Power Management could have an effect on this as could the BIOS shutdown 
entries. As these vary from system to system, your on your own here. Just 
make sure the entries seem reasonable.

There is a program that is better than CTRL-ALT-Delete for displaying what 
is running in the background. EndItAll  http://www.pcmag.com/utilities/
displays much more information on what is running and has the ability to 
shut stuff down.

I've seen occasional problems on my system which seem to stem from 
combinations of nVidia drivers and DirectX versions relating to shutdowns. 
No real solution but some games aggravate the problem.

It is interesting that you can power off and not require a scandisk run. 
That indicates the drives powered down correctly but the video did not turn 
off. Could be a video driver problem and you could try and update. You 
could also look at msconfig/Advanced make sure that fast shutdown is 
disabled. You should certainly try several shutdowns without having run any 
programs to see if that makes any difference. Microsoft Knowledge Base has 
some suggestions for troubleshooting shut down problems that are worth 
looking at.

KnudsenMJ at aol.com wrote:

> 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.
>  
>