System won't Power Down after Vista 64-bit Install 1

[ID10T16]

I've seen alot of people on the net that have shutdown problems after they install Vista, but none quite like mine.

Here's the situation...

I installed Vista Ultimate 64-bit as a clean install on my system. When I attempt to shutdown or restart my system will go through the standard shutdown process, but fails to kill power. The screen will go black (and the monitors will even lose signal), but the fans and drives and such continue to spin. I do not have any driver conflicts (or at least none that Vista informs me of) and I've tried every possible power configuration I can think of (in BIOS and in Vista).

Now, the odd thing is that it will shutdown and restart properly if I'm in Safe Mode.

Here's what I've tried so far...
1. Checked to make sure all drivers are signed or are what came with Vista, and are as up to date as possible.
2. Changed various power settings.
3. Turned off everything I could via msconfig (startup processes and services and such), no luck.
4. Unplugged all USB peripherals.
5. Did some registry editing, still no luck.
6. Promised my computer some more ram and a new vid card if it played nice... it didn't bite.

The best I can figure is that there is perhaps a driver that is causing the issue, but I don't know what.

Here's my system specs...
MB: MSI K8N Diamond Plus (latest drivers and bios)
CPU: AMD Athlon64 FX-57
Sound: Creative Labs SB X-Fi Plat (Latest drivers)
Vid: NVidia Geforce 7900GT x2 (latest drivers) SLI'd or not makes no difference.
RAM: 2Gig Corsair XMS
Power: 620 Watt Enermax Liberty
HD: 2x WD 150Gig Raptors RAID Striping via NVRAID

I hope someone has heard or knows of something that can help me alleviate this.

Thanks to anyone that can help.

 

[Nelviticus]

My Vista installation wouldn't shut down properly either. At the weekend I uninstalled the beta drivers from Creative for my Audigy 2 ZS sound card and installed some newer ones (still beta though) and now it can shut down properly.

That may or may not help you!

If you restart instead of shutdown, does that work or does it still halt with the fans running?

Nelviticus

 

[linney]

Safe Mode is similar to a clean boot: they both disable non-essential programs and services. Safe Mode also disables non-essential drivers.

It would pay to concentrate on your drivers.

Even this XP article may offer a few clues.

SHUTDOWN & RESTART TROUBLESHOOTING

http://aumha.org/win5/a/shtdwnxp.htm

Talking of clues, what does the Event Viewer have to say on the matter, if anything?


You can even have a look at the Reliability Monitor in Computer Management too.

"Reliability Monitor provides a system stability overview and trend analysis with detailed information about individual events that may affect the system's overall stability."

 

[gpalmer711]

I once had this on a Windows XP machine which was due to the ACPI features being disabled.

Open the Control Panel and double click on System. Open the device manager. Click on the plus next to "System Devices", Make sure that ACPI is not disabled.

Greg Palmer
Freeware Utilities for Windows Administrators.

http://www.palmersoft.co.uk

 

[ID10T16]

Nothing is disabled in device manager (which sucks cause that would have been an easy fix).

I've actually already gone through all the ACPI and power options imaginable.

Right now I've enabled the view of hidden devices in device manager, viewed them in Safe Mode versus Normal Mode, and am in the tedious process of trial and error to see if I can find the culprit in there.

Will update when I find out any solution, or just find out any new information.

Oh, I also checked through Event Viewer, but that proved to be inconclusive. If there was an error that showed in there, then I would assume it would show for every day since I boot my machine at least once every day. Unfortunately, I saw no entries that met that requirement.

If I'm incorrect in thinking that, please correct me.

Thanx to everyone for their help so far. We'll get this figured out, and hopefully save someone else some time in the future.

 

[linney]

When you are in Safe Mode, the Event Viewer will throw up errors that are only because of the fact that you are in Safe Mode and certain Services do not run from Safe Mode.

There are also various logs created by Windows Setup that you will find in the Windows folder. Review the Setupapi.log file, the Setupact.log file, and the Setuperr.log file (in the %windir% folder) to try to determine any problems.

As you have just installed Vista you may want to try installing it again to determine if the results are different second time around. If you do, remove any easily removed hardware during the install, check for any Bios updates, set your Bios to Safe defaults, and disable any running Bios anti virus scanning. You can try the last suggestions with your Bios whether you rerun the Setup or do not.