From: Paul on
Steve Giannoni wrote:
> Device manager says Uniprocessor. I am a novice at this level and
> can't follow your comments ...
>

OK. It's a motherboard or power supply problem.
Can you follow that ?

Knowing that, doesn't help you very much.
Someone still has to debug it and figure it out.

Not all problems have simple solutions, where one
component stands out as "the culprit". Sometimes
it requires a process of elimination approach.
Perhaps a shop can swap components and tell you
what is broken.

I'm going by your claim, that there is a black screen
at shutdown, as proof the OS thinks the computer
is turned off. And that leaves faulty hardware.

Paul
From: Man-wai Chang to The Door (33600bps) on
On 6/9/2010 01:44, Steve Giannoni wrote:
> P-IV running Windows XP Home. Windows appears to be shutting down as
> the screen goes dark, but the "turn off" has to be done manually. Any
> help will be greatly appreciated& thanks ...

Go Hardware -> Device Manager, Remove the ACPI device, reboot and let
Window$ re-detect it. Then try shutting down again.

--
@~@ Might, Courage, Vision, SINCERITY.
/ v \ Simplicity is Beauty! May the Force and Farce be with you!
/( _ )\ (x86_64 Ubuntu 9.10) Linux 2.6.34
^ ^ 15:49:01 up 22 days 19:00 2 users load average: 1.04 1.06 1.01
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From: Steve Giannoni on
How do I identify the ACPI device ...


On Thu, 10 Jun 2010 15:49:55 +0800, "Man-wai Chang to The Door
(33600bps)" <toylet.toylet(a)gmail.com> wrote:

>On 6/9/2010 01:44, Steve Giannoni wrote:
>> P-IV running Windows XP Home. Windows appears to be shutting down as
>> the screen goes dark, but the "turn off" has to be done manually. Any
>> help will be greatly appreciated& thanks ...
>
>Go Hardware -> Device Manager, Remove the ACPI device, reboot and let
>Window$ re-detect it. Then try shutting down again.
From: GlowingBlueMist on
On 6/9/2010 1:48 PM, Steve Giannoni wrote:
> Thanks for responding. How do I "boot a copy of one of the Live Linux
> distributions"? Which item do I download? I am a novice at stuff at
> this level, etc. ...
>
> On Wed, 09 Jun 2010 11:12:53 -0500, GlowingBlueMist
> <glowingbluemist(a)truely.invalid> wrote:
>
>> On 6/8/2010 12:44 PM, Steve Giannoni wrote:
>>> P-IV running Windows XP Home. Windows appears to be shutting down as
>>> the screen goes dark, but the "turn off" has to be done manually. Any
>>> help will be greatly appreciated& thanks ...
>>
>> Like others have mentioned the problem could be hardware or software at
>> this stage.
>>
>> I have had external USB devices, which had their own external power
>> source, feed 5 volts back into the computer's USB port and causing
>> similar shutdown problems. One was a cheap manufacturer who left out a
>> protective blocking diode and another had a jumper that was to have been
>> removed when using an external power supply.
>>
>> As for the software possibilities, I would boot a copy of one of the
>> Live Linux distributions in order rule out that kind of problem. If the
>> Linux OS boots properly and powers down the PC correctly then the
>> problem has most definitely been identified as a software issue with
>> your present installation.
>>
>> Live Linux software can downloaded at http://www.livecdlist.com/ You
>> would need to burn it to a CD or DVD before using it.
>>
>> If your motherboard supports booting from USB you can use the freeware
>> program UNetbootin and have it transfer a Live Linux distribution to a
>> Flash drive. It is great for test booting a system when you suspect the
>> CD/DVD drive may be defective, provided the motherboard supports booting
>>from a USB port. The program will download the Linux distribution for
>> you or it can use a Linux ISO you have already downloaded to load and
>> make your Flash drive bootable.
>>
>> You can find the UNetbootin at: http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/ and
>> it is Freeware.
>>
>> For this I usually use Puppy Linux as it is a rather small download
>> while still retaining the necessary software to recognize most systems.
>> It has a graphic desktop that it boots into rather than just the
>> command line that many other distributions might present. No need to
>> know Linux commands to boot or shut it down.
>>
>> Last, I have seen a motherboard battery starting to fail that caused
>> random hidden changes on the motherboard setup. As a last resort I'd
>> try replacing your motherboards battery and reconfigure the BIOS
>> settings, especially if the battery is 4 or 5 years old.

Ok Steve.
Here is a link that will take you to the ISO file you will need to burn
into a CD for Puppy Linux.
http://puppylinux.org/main/index.php?file=Download%20Latest%20Release.htm

Click on either of the two files listed called lupu-502.iso and your
browser should initiate a download of the file for you. Go ahead and
download it.

Next you will need a program that will burn this image file into your
CD. If you do not have one I'll include a link to a freeware one that I
use called CDBurnerXP, but don't let the name mislead you. The latest
version of the program was written to work on Operating Systems: Windows
2000/XP/2003 Server/Vista/2008/Win7 (x86 / x64). The link to the
program is: http://cdburnerxp.se/
Click on the "Download NOw" choice and as before your browser should
begin a download of the install file. Run it and the program will be
installed on your system for you.

Once you have CDBurnerXP installed on your comptuer and you start the
program just pick the option "Burn ISO Image" and use the Browse button
to locate the lupu-502.iso file you previously downloaded.

I leave the "Burn Method" option on "Choose automatically"
I also click on the "Verify data after burning", "Finalize disc", and
"Eject disc after burning" options.

Then after placing a blank CD into your CD burner click on the Burn Disc
button and wait for it to finish and eject the disk.

Then it's just a matter of making your computer boot from the CD drive.
It may already be set to look for a CD and boot from it if it finds on
so put the disk back into the drive and try booting.

If the computer still boots directly from the hard drive with out an
option to boot from CD there are other ways to get it to do it.

Some computers flash a very brief menu option on the screen, something
like "Hit F11 for boot selection" or "Hit F11 for BBS menu". If you see
something like that hit the "F" key indicated by your computer and a
little menu will pop up that will list the boot devices your computer
knows about, scroll to the CD drive and tell it to boot from it.

If neither of the above gets the computer to boot the CD you may need to
enter your BIOS at boot up and change the boot order of your computer.
You will have to put the CD drive above the hard drive in the boot order
so the computer will be forced to look at the CD drive first during the
boot sequence.

When you boot the CD for this test just accept all default options. No
need to choose high quality graphics or even pick the right time zone.
Then once the Puppy desktop comes up all you need to do is click on Menu
(lower left corner) and pick Shutdown, then Power-off. When a menu pops
up asking if you want to save your settings, choose no and the computer
should then power off if things work properly.

From: Man-wai Chang to The Door (33600bps) on

I really forgot how to do it. Google "winxp shutdown problem"

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/810903


On 6/10/2010 20:16, Steve Giannoni wrote:
> How do I identify the ACPI device ...

--
@~@ Might, Courage, Vision, SINCERITY.
/ v \ Simplicity is Beauty! May the Force and Farce be with you!
/( _ )\ (x86_64 Ubuntu 9.10) Linux 2.6.34
^ ^ 21:27:01 up 23 days 38 min 2 users load average: 1.04 1.03 1.00
不借貸! 不詐騙! 不援交! 不打交! 不打劫! 不自殺! 請考慮綜援 (CSSA):
http://www.swd.gov.hk/tc/index/site_pubsvc/page_socsecu/sub_addressesa