make WinXP behave like NT when shutting down

[GoAheadTarCon]

Hi all,

My goal is to make XP behave like NT when shutting down: instead of
turning off the power, show the message "it's now safe to turn off
your computer".

does anyone know how to do this?

Thanx,
Ariel

 

[Alex Nichol]

My goal is to make XP behave like NT when shutting down: instead of
turning off the power, show the message "it's now safe to turn off
your computer".

You need to remove the ACPI support - and not have any APM on, either.
While I see suggestions about removing ACPI in the Device Manager, I am
very doubtful of their safety. What *will* work involves a 'repair'
reinstall of the system, which is a substantial exercise. Set the BIOS
to boot CD before Hard disk, then boot the XP CD, start Setup (do not
take 'Repair' at this stage), then after the license agreement take
'Repair Installation'. This will retain your existing software
installations and most settings. But Updates will have to be run again,
especially SP1;
It is important to activate the basic XP Firewall before you ever
connect to the net to get the patches, so as to be protected against
things like the BLAST worm.

At the first reboot, change the boot order back to Hard disk first. You
will then get a black screen with a white bar - 'Hit F6 to install
special. . . '. Hit F7 instead; nothing will appear to happen, but the
system will install without ACPI. There will then be a Power Options -
APM page, where Enable APM (so as to support Power off at shutdown) will
be off by default

 

[GoAheadTarCon]

But, I’m developing an xp setup process for a production line,
and hoping microsoft’s engineers gave it some thought and said
“hey, maybe someone would like to preserve the NT behaviour for
some reason, so we should give them a chance to do so, if not from the
GUI, then perhapse a value in the registry???”. We also found a
way to do that by downgrading the PC driver from “ACPI
multiprocessor PC” to “Standard PC”. The first thing
I saw after the reboot, was that many of the devices in the device
manager were with question marks. I don’t think we should
consider that option.

So, does anybody know of any “easy” way to do it, or of
any “proof” that there is no easy way to do it?

 

[Alex Nichol]

So, does anybody know of any “easy” way to do it, or of
any “proof” that there is no easy way to do it?

If you are using ACPI I don't think there is any option offered - at the
end of shutdown, windows sends the power off signal to the motherboard,
and if it has an ATX power supply, that turns off. Even if you were to
inhibit that happening at the motherboard, Windows would still not
display any 'it is now safe' message: the ACPI HAL just does not
provide for it.

I think Microsoft is becoming very wary of maintaining legacy control
and interfaces for the benefit of those who do not want to adapt.

 

[Alexander Grigoriev]

See [ACPIOptions] section in TXTSETUP.SIF. You can disable ACPI HAL
installation, if you edit ACPIEnable value. Then simple script would disable
APM after installation (if it's not disabled by default at all).