Soft Power Switch on Windows98

[Deamon]

Hi all, could anybody tell me how you can turn off the soft power switch on a Compaq 4420CA Presario computer? I've been having some Shutdown problems (when it shuts off it reboots by itself) and nobody seems to be able to find the fix so I was going to disable fast shutdown and soft power and just use it as a on/off switch when its ready to shut down unless anybody knows how to fix the shutdown problem (am running original Windows 98, not SE so that shutdown supplement won't work)

 

[Crustyoldbloke]

The soft shutdown/power up is located in the BIOS.

Have you tried shutting down from Desktop by writing a shortcut?

Right click Desktop and choose NEW-SHORTCUT-in the command line copy and paste

C:\WINDOWS\RUNDLL.EXE user.exe,exitwindows

APPLY-OK

Now when you want to shutdown, double click the desktop icon.

HTH Error! Keyboard not attached. Press F1 to continue
Phil
Si fractum non sit, noli id reficere.

 

[gargouille]

http://www.aumha.org/

Has a troubleshooting shutdown issues list of things to do.

The BIOS is usually the 1st place I look...turning off all the power-on or wake-on states...telling it to stay off after power failure. You may find a soft-off setting there, but I don't think it'll work for you other than as a kludge.
If the computer isn't shutting down properly turning it off with the switch will still give you the same procedure when you do start it up again.
Power management settings in the Control Panel also may be incorrectly set. Disable all the power-down modes and tell it to shut down when you say to shut down.

 

[Deamon]

I tried the desktop shortcut just now and it does the same thing, it shuts off for about one second and then reboots back up again :/

 

[Deamon]

I tried looking in BIOS and my power management settings in control panel as well. Everything seems to be off and the power button is assigned to shutdown although i still have to hold 4 seconds for it to shutdown. There's no soft-off setting in BIOS on this computer, i know one i have does, but this one is a very worthless BIOS But I've done everything you've all suggested, nothing has worked so far.

 

[gargouille]

IF this happened within the last 5 boots (doubtfully, tho)
a scanreg(space)/restore
at the DOS prompt (shutdown to DOS) will offer to restore a registry from when it may have worked correctly. But something tells me you've not done anything about this for awhile.
Anything (software/hardware) added that may have signalled/caused the change?
Try disabling all the items in the Startup tab of msconfig and try it. It could be an item in there that's hanging or having problems shutting down. (I'd suspect 3rd party apps causing it.)
Try removing all programs from Add/RemovePrograms that you don't need.
No one knows your system as well as you...and I bet if you just ponder the issue long enough you'll come to realize something you did with the computer may be causing it.

 

[Deamon]

That could be a problem This is actually a friend's computer i'm trying to find the answer for. From what i know this was pre-loaded with WindowsXP and XP drivers but it was converted to Win98 and 98 drivers, i know of about 7 other computers that this was done too and they've worked fine...just this one seems to be having problems. I've tried isolating any bad drivers or such. The only thing that might help is if i do a step-by-step boot up and enable everything except ndis.vxd it will shut down perfectly. Would that help any?

 

[Crustyoldbloke]

This may help you. I cribbed it from annoyances.

I've discovered one more way in which Win98 conflicts with newer hardware. If you have a processor that runs faster than 2.1 GHz, and if you need to load ndis.vxd (a network virtual device driver), Win98 will not load (except in safe mode). You can do a step by step confirmation, and say "no" to ndis.vxd, but then your network hardware drivers will not load. Microsoft has a "hot fix" for this problem, though, and so far it has worked for me. Check the Microsoft Knowledge Base Article - Q312108, and good luck!

HTH
Error! Keyboard not attached. Press F1 to continue
Phil
Si fractum non sit, noli id reficere.

 

[Deamon]

My Compaq only runs at 1.4Ghz so i don't really think the fix will work for it.

 

[Win98User]

Hi,
I am not familiar with that model of compaq. But I am familiar with compaq!

Is your model one of those where compaq want you to close the machine by pressing the power button once to shut it down (but they don't make it overly clear to anyone) rather than the usual windows shutdown procedure?

Regards.

Booting your machine seldom does it any favours.

 

[Deamon]

The computer I have, if i push the power button it will shut itself down yes. I can also use shutdown from the start menu or any other way as well yes. each way works to shut down..but one second after its shutdown it reboots up once again which gets rather annoying and shouldn't do that.

 

[Win98User]

sounding like a hardware problem.

If this problem has always been with the machine, then it is certainly hardware related.

Open it up and make sure that all the cables that lead from the case back to the mobo are secured firmly - AND if you have the motherboard manual, make sure that the connections are ok. While you are in there you may as well make sure that everything else is seated correctly.

Regards. Booting your machine seldom does it any favours.

 

[Deamon]

Well every piece of hardware that is connected is working perfectly...there's just about nothing wrong with the computer besides it rebooting one second after its shutdown. I'll try that though, if it doesn't work i'll format the computer. This computer came pre-loaded with WinXP and XP drivers, we had to convert it to Win98 with 98 drivers so that may be a problem. I'll try to re-install everything though thx for all your suggestions guys...

 

[gargouille]

Just again ran thru the posts and don't see it mentioned, so if it's there and I missed it...sorryyy!

Open msconfig and uncheck everything there...then shutdown and see what happens?
IF it works, it's something in the startup
(d__n this happened in another thread yesterday!)
Let us know.

 

[Deamon]

Hey gargouille, I tried unchecking everything in the startup and restarted and shut down but it reboots again all the same so i think that rules out the startup stuff