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Won't shut down

7up
Community Veteran
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Registered: ‎01-08-2007

Won't shut down

Hi guys
I've got one machine tht refuses to shut down randomly. It will log off and shut down windows but refuses to actually power down the motherboard. It's very frustrating as this is one of my headless boxes which is stashed away in the cupboard meaning I have to keep going and checking it to see if it has shut down.
Any ideas?
I've checked the event logger and its showing nothing but then Windows has shut down so it wouldn't log anything anyway.
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22 REPLIES 22
HPsauce
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Re: Won't shut down

I've got this on one of my Vista systems. With XP it's fine.
I've played with various power management options in the BIOS and Vista itself but got nowhere.
It is very much the "final act" as it never complains on startup.
If it's relevant it's an AMD Sempron 2800, can't recall the motherboard.
7up
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Re: Won't shut down

Right I've dragged the beast back out of the cupboard. It still randomly does it bit not often. It seems to be more frequent when I've been logged onto it via RDP. This is very annoying as its got a freshly installed OS on it.
I'm also wondering if the mobo battery might need replacing - I've had the board for years and its been sat in a box with its battery running. Now at one point I got so annoyed I turned off the PSU. Then it wouldn't boot past the bios. Dragged it out, hooked it up to the gear and the bios said checksum error. So I've been in and setup the clock again and now its hunky dory but it has once refused to shut down again since and that was without RDP.
So... any ideas? It's very annoying. It's a big machine (6 optical drives should give you an idea of size) and it weighs a lot so I don't want to be dragging it out every other day to try and sort it. All ideas are welcome.
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Denzil
Grafter
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Registered: ‎31-07-2007

Re: Won't shut down

What OS, exactly? If it's Vista, I suppose you know that Start-Shutdown doesn't actually shut down by default, just puts it into sleep mode.
7up
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Re: Won't shut down

XP
Never had this problem before which is why its annoying.
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God
Grafter
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Registered: ‎30-07-2007

Re: Won't shut down

Might be worth seeing if the problems persists in 'Safe Mode'? That might  at least narrow the problem down a bit.
7up
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Re: Won't shut down

Yeah safe mode isn't brilliant for RDP though is it and thts where I'm having tons of problems...
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God
Grafter
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Registered: ‎30-07-2007

Re: Won't shut down

True.... What about if you connect via https://secure.logmein.com/ same issues?
7up
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Re: Won't shut down

i wouldn't know seeing as I don't use that service.
I've always used RDP for my local network and thats how it should stay really.
It's really annoying the hell out of me because the OS seems to shut down but the actual motherboard doesn't seem to want to do the same. Plus its random and it only seems to happen after its been running for a while or been used for heavy activity.
In the 20 plus startups and shut downs I did on it while it was out of the cupboard it happened once and that was before I changed a registry key (PowerDownAfterShutDown = 1). It didn't happen again after so I stuffed the thing back in the cupboard (back breaking work as its so heavy). Now, get hoime from Tesco.... guess what? Go to shut it down, it goes and freezes again.
GRRRRRRRRR
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HPsauce
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Re: Won't shut down

Just out of interest, though it may not help much, my problem on Vista is only there (and always there) on a normal boot; in safe mode it shuts down normally.
As you can probably gather I've given up trying to fix it - life's too short!
And if I was in the "in the cupboard" scenario I'd run a cable to a mains switch outside so I know it'soff!
techguy
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Registered: ‎12-09-2008

Re: Won't shut down

I take it you mean that it stalls on Windows is shutting down? (when you have had it attached to a monitor)
My system does this as well sometimes and am trying to get to the bottom of whether a process is randomly crashing and holding up the shutdown.
7up
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Re: Won't shut down

Quote from: techguy
I take it you mean that it stalls on Windows is shutting down? (when you have had it attached to a monitor)

Yes however this is also slightly more to it. Everytime this happens the HDD rumbles madly for about 3 times longer than normal. Most times it shuts down within 7 seconds (virtually clean machine remember) yet when it decides to freee it takes around 21 seconds or so of continual rumbling to give the game away. Then the HDD stops and thats it. All the power remains on and the fans carry on spinning etc.
Its so annoying.
The other system under the stairs (older - uses SDRam) never fails to shut down at all. Does it every single time and has done for years. In fact that old thing has probably been the most reliable unit I've ever had!
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techguy
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Re: Won't shut down

Hmmmm

Different to problem I'm having then as hard disk keeps running, its gotta be something to do with power control (ACPI)

Is power management control assigned to the OS in the BIOS (cant think what the option is called at the minute)? Though it does seem rather weird that its hit and miss.
Make sure you have the latest inf files and drivers for your mobo chipset as it could just be a certain software condition that causes the OS to not send the command to switch to soft off

7up
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Re: Won't shut down

Hmm I'll have to have another look into the drivers issue but last time I looked at the device manager the only thing with a question mark was the sound device (which I never bother installing as RDP uses its own sound driver and seeing as its a headless box...).
I'll take another look into the mobo drivers tomozza and see if I've missed anything. Normally I just let XP setup and use its own drivers (never seems to make much difference IMO).
I'll let you know how I get on..
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samuria
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Re: Won't shut down

Try logging off with rdp then shutting it down remotely with
http://www.beyondlogic.org/solutions/shutdown/shutdown.htm We used to shut 100's of pc down with this util not very often it fails