Will not FULLY shut down

[J. Veit]

Hoping someone can help.

I am a senior and not computer technical. A friend has given me his Dell
superseded desktop computer running XP Professional and I am grateful for
his gift.

Unfortunately, it has a problem insofar It will not FULLY shut down after I
pressed the Turn Of button. The computer goes thru the normal states, like
"Saving your Settings" etc. until only the empty blue windswept motive
screen is left and keyboard and mouse are inactive. But the computer itself
is still running. I can only close the computer down by pushing and holding
the On-Off button. This cant be good for the system and I am afraid that I
damage the windows system.

I can't afford the $100.00+ fee a technician would charge to fix it and hope
that someone on this news group can walk me through the steps to overcome
this problem.

Thanks, John

 

[Barry Schwarz]

Are you using the "classic start menu" or the default "start menu"?
How many different turn off buttons did you press (should be 2)? Is
the blue motif screen you see a solid blue panel or a panorama with a
grass field and some clouds in the sky?

 

[Sylvia M]

In the lower corner, at the bottom of your screen, there is a "Start"
bar. Believe it or not, that's where you click to turn off your
computer. After you click the "Start" bar, you will see a "Menu of
choices (Explore these sometime)...
At the bottom of this list you will find a red box with a white circle
and line, with the words "Turn off computer" A new window will pop up,
giving you the choice to "Turn Off", "Restart" or "StandBy",...all
useful choices. To answer your query, this is where you most safely
turn off your computer.

Perhaps you have already done this, in which case I hope someone else
helps you in another way.
HappyToHelp
Sylvia R.

 

[J. Veit]

Thank you for your reply, Barry.

I appologise for not descibing acurately the shut -down procedure. Namely:
Click START -> TURN OF COMPUTER -> TURN OFF
This bring up the correct response:
LOGGING OFF ->
SAVING YOUR DATA ->
WINDOW IS SHUTTING DOWN.
The next sceen is the empty (No writing) blue windswept motive screen and
the keyboard and mouse shut down, but the computer itself is still running.
I mistakenly said that I can only close the computer down by pushing and
holding the "On-Off button". What I ment to say was the Power-Of button on
the computer (Not the screen).

John
---------------------------------------------------

 

[J. Veit]

Thank you for your reply, Sylvia.

Please read my reply to Barry.

Thanks, John

---------------------------------------------------

 

[Bob Willard]

Hoping someone can help.

I am a senior and not computer technical. A friend has given me his Dell
superseded desktop computer running XP Professional and I am grateful
for his gift.

Unfortunately, it has a problem insofar It will not FULLY shut down
after I pressed the Turn Of button. The computer goes thru the normal
states, like "Saving your Settings" etc. until only the empty blue
windswept motive screen is left and keyboard and mouse are inactive. But
the computer itself is still running. I can only close the computer down
by pushing and holding the On-Off button. This cant be good for the
system and I am afraid that I damage the windows system.

Pushing and holding the power on/off button will not damage the system,
since that only turns off the power supply, which is the last (missing)
step in a full shut down. When your problem happens, wait a minute or
two, then manually push&hold the power button.

I've had a couple of WinXP PCs that sometimes exhibited your symptoms,
but never one that always did it. And, I had a couple of pre-XP PCs
(one with Win95 and one with Win98SE) that always did as you described.
The work-around is simply to manually turn off the power supply -- and
don't worry about damage.

 

[jim]

Hoping someone can help.

I am a senior and not computer technical. A friend has given me his Dell
superseded desktop computer running XP Professional and I am grateful for his gift.

Unfortunately, it has a problem insofar It will not FULLY shut down after
I pressed the Turn Of button. The computer goes thru the normal states,
like "Saving your Settings" etc. until only the empty blue windswept
motive screen is left and keyboard and mouse are inactive. But the
computer itself is still running. I can only close the computer down by
pushing and holding the On-Off button. This cant be good for the system
and I am afraid that I damage the windows system.

I can't afford the $100.00+ fee a technician would charge to fix it and
hope that someone on this news group can walk me through the steps to
overcome this problem.

Thanks, John

What does the power options say in the control panel ?

 

[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

On Fri, 03 May 2013 05:17:55 -0400, "Bob Willard"

Pushing and holding the power on/off button will not damage the system,
since that only turns off the power supply, which is the last (missing)
step in a full shut down. When your problem happens, wait a minute or
two, then manually push&hold the power button.

I've had a couple of WinXP PCs that sometimes exhibited your symptoms,
but never one that always did it. And, I had a couple of pre-XP PCs
(one with Win95 and one with Win98SE) that always did as you described.
The work-around is simply to manually turn off the power supply -- and
don't worry about damage.

Although it may not physically damage the computer, it certainly can
damage the file system if there are files still open. You should not
force the computer to power down this way as a normal thing. The
correct thing to do is, as the OP desires, to find and fix the cause so
that the machine finished the shutdown and powers down as it should.

 

[Barry Schwarz]

I still don't understand what you mean by blue windswept motive but
since the screen has no data on it, it appears that Windows has
managed to shut down normally except for your system's power supply.
(On most systems, you can hear the movement of the read-write head as
the hard disk is accessed. After the blue screen appears, yours
should be silent.) If this is indeed the case, then pushing the power
off button on the computer will not damage Windows or any of your data
files.

Since you received this used system from a friend, you might ask if he
ever experienced this problem. The text in the Help and Support
function implies that not all computers can power down automatically
after Windows shuts down.

You might also check the following though I am really grasping at
straws here:

Are you running from a user account or one with administrator
authority? Is there any difference if you shut down from the other
type of account?

Has SP3 been installed? Are the other updates up-to-date?

If, instead of clicking Turn Off the second time, you click
Restart, does Windows shut down and then reboot?