I'm trying to help my wifes sister over the telephone with her computer but we're at a dead end. Looking for some help here!

The Computer is a little over a year old, running WinXP. It was purchased used from an office fleet and she claims she's never been able to shut it down using the windows "Start/Shutdown" sequence.. The only thing she been doing is rebooting with the power button on the front of the PC and/or turning off the power supply itself.

She says when she starts the Windows "Start/Shutdown" sequence, instead of shutting down, it just snaps right back to the desktop.

In WinXP, is there an administrator control that stops users from shuting off the computer? If so, I haven't been able to find it.
Anything else I should look for?
Thanks,
Phil

 

I had exactly the same problem with the computer I am now using. I was able to change something ( I don't remember where it is) that kept it from re-booting on error. Then it would stop with a blue screen and a message that stated the problem could be in some recently installed software.

Trouble is...the problem was there from the day I purchased the silly thing. I finally did a "factory initialization" (it's a Compaq) and the problem disappeared.

 

Try closing all open programs that are running first except explorer. I use Enditall, to do it for me. Its a cool little program. Plus I think if you just try to use task manager to close explorer it will ask you if you wanna reboot. I dont have XP, so I dont know about that. See if windowsupdate has any shutdown update fixes. Using the power button is not good to shutdown, it could cause soft errors on the drive and if you dont have an utility that checks for that after every reboot then your drive will fill with those logical errors and soon be slower than molasses in Jan. Try this http://support.microsoft.com/search/default.aspx?catalog=LCID%3D1033&spid=1173&query=xp+shutdown&adv=&mode=r&cat=False this http://support.microsoft.com/kb/328934/en-us and this http://support.microsoft.com/kb/831431/en-us

 

If this was a office computer on a managed network, the computer might be waiting for the original office network to send it information prior to shutdown. The network at my office "pushes" updates and patches to our machines when shutting down, if the computer cannot connect to that network, it will just hang there.

It may be easier for you too reformat and reload the OS if this is the case.

 

I love to format. The only thing is all the CD's. So I bought a DVD drive and now it only takes like 19 DVD's. Still too much. I am thinking of either an external harddrive or another internal one the same size as my C.

 

Hey Phil,

There are a couple of places you need to look that can control this type of shutdown behavior. Since you say this was computer was from an office fleet, I would first look in the BIOS settings.

1) On initial Startup: choose SETUP BIOS: (or similar wording): Find Choice indicating POWER MANAGMENT:
Whether or not APM (Advanced Power Managment) is enabled makes a difference — but the effect could go two ways. Some users report that XP reboots on shutdown if APM is enabled, but shuts Windows down just fine if APM is disabled. Other users report exactly the opposite behavior.

2) Customize Your Computer’s Power Switch
Another solution for Windows XP users involves using the power switch on your computer — but only after you’ve set it to shutdown Windows first! If you poweroff your computer without shutting down Windows (and letting your applications save their data and close, if necessary), you invite a whole lot of serious problems! The correct way to do this is: After a fresh reboot of the computer, in the Windows XP Control Panel click Power Options. Click the Advanced tab. In the Power Buttons section, under “When I press the power button on my computer,” select “Shutdown.” (If this is not visible on your Advanced tab, then your computer does not have the hardware capability to do this job correctly, or the capability is disabled in BIOS/CMOS.) Click Apply. This sets your computer so that when you press the hardware power button it will first do a proper shutdown of Windows, and then poweroff the computer.


Another area to investigate is:
3) Disabling the “restart on system failure” feature may permit the exact cause to be isolated: Right-click on My Computer, click Properties, click the Advanced tab. Under “Startup & Recovery,” click Settings. Under “System Failure,” uncheck the box in front of “Automatically restart.”

Try these one-at-a-time. But I would look first in the BIOS's APM settings as stated above.

Traveler1125

 

for some strange reason I seem to remember a fix for this at MS windows site.

Not positive but I believe that is how I fixed mine that would not shut down.