Powering down by on-off button

[Krishno22]

As a school teacher I run a lab of 35 computers. Half of the computers are the Dell OptiPlex's that only have one button (no reset button) Usually when the computer freezes up I'll have the students reboot it by holding the on-off button for 10 seconds and then turn it back on (if ctrl+alt+delete won't work). This usually fixes the freeze up problem.

One of my students came up to me today and told me that his dad's computer assistant said that the computer will keep a log of how many times the computer was shut down properly, reseted, and powered off manually. Supposedly if you power it down too many times the computer will completely crash on you. It sounds like an urban legend to me?
How true is this?

Is there a patch I can use to shut them down properly? I am currently using Altiris Vision to maintain my lab environment and the auto shutdown will put all of the computers into shutting down mode but will not automatically turn them off. I know that this is a Windows 98 problem but the Shutdown Wizard at the Microsoft site was kind of a pain in the ***.

Any help would be great!

[Roy]

Here is a site dedicated to Shutdown Utilities (http://www.nonags.com/nonags/shutd.html) . Maybe you can find something there that will help.

I use the one called Shutz. I puts an icon in the tool bar. Left-click shuts down, right-click restarts. http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

BTW ~ Urban Myth it is, although I'd use a different expression. http://www.sysopt.com/forum/wink.gif


[This message has been edited by Roy (edited 03-19-2001).]

[jmatt]

This may help avoid freezing .
http://www.helponthe.net/news/042000.html
Scroll down to : ** Periodic Hard Drive Maintenance **

To troubleshoot and avoid: ·Illegal Operations, Invalid Page Faults,
Lockups/Freezeups, the following steps can be used, regardless of the
program (and whether Microsoft product or not) that causes the fault.
Use them under Windows 95, 98, or NT. If you use your PC regularly,
take these steps every week or every other week.

1. Close all programs.

2. Hit Start-Find-Files or Folders. In the Named box, type
( or copy & paste ) the following exactly as it appears
(but it is not case-sensitive), and without any spaces:

*.tmp,~*.*

Make sure the Look-In box contains the hard drive from which your
applications run, usually (C http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif. Make sure the Include Subfolders
checkbox is checked. Hit Find Now.

When the little magnifying glass stops, searching has completed and
you can see how many files were found at the bottom of the dialog box.
If you feel bad about having so many, the author's record on a user's
PC is 6,600, though less than a hundred is typical. On your keyboard,
hold your Ctrl key down and hit the letter "a"; this selects all the
files that were found. Hit your delete key and say Yes when asked if
you want to send all the files to the recycle bin.

If you are asked if you are sure you want to delete a file because it
is a program that you will not be able to run again, or because it is
a read-only file, say Yes. Program files do not start with a squiggly
line (~ it's called a tilde - till-duh), nor do they end with "tmp."

If you are unable to delete some of the files, hit Ctrl-Alt-Delete and
End Task on everything in the list EXCEPT Explorer and Systray.
(It is okay to End Task on your antivirus software because you will be
rebooting your PC, which should restart your antivirus software again.)
Once you have ended all of the tasks (except Explorer and Systray),
try selecting (ctrl-a) and deleting the files again. It is usually
okay to leave several files in there if you are unable to delete them.

Close the Find Files window when you are done.

3. Empty your recycle bin. Shortcut: right-click the recycle bin and
hit Empty Recycle Bin.

4. Run Scandisk (not for NT users), should take a minute or two. Hit
Start-Programs-Accessories-System Tools-Scandisk. Make sure the hard
drive is selected (usually C http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif, do a Standard test (run a Thorough
test the first time and every few months), and check the Automatically
Fix Errors box. The first time you run Scandisk, hit the Advanced
button and make sure that Display Summary is set to Always and hit OK.
Then hit Start to run Scandisk.
Close the Scandisk report after it is displayed (and after you've read
it--and hopefully there were 0 bytes in bad sectors), then close
Scandisk itself.

5. Reboot your PC (you're not getting out of this one, NT users).

About once a month, run Defrag (not for NT users). This is best
performed at the end of the steps above, but particularly if you have
installed, uninstalled, or reinstalled any programs, or if you have
added a lot of files to your hard drive or deleted a lot of files
from your hard drive. Just make sure you close all programs first.
Hit Start-Programs-Accessories-System Tools-Disk Defragmenter. Run it
on the C: drive. The author suggests running it regardless of Windows'
suggestion. Reboot your PC after running Defrag.

[Krishno22]

I'm currently using a GHOST program every other month when I update the programs that I want the students to use. If a computer is giving me too many problems (such as a monitor that won't switch over to the right colors because it keeps on getting an error or something to that effect) I'll reghost it and it usually seems to fix the problem.

I was just concerned about manually turning on and off the computers all the time. Instead of trouble shooting everytime the computer locks up on a student, I just tell them to restart the computer.

If the student shuts down from his computer.. I normally won't have a problem with the computer turning off. I only have problems when I try to shut them all down at once with my Altiris Vision software. The company has told me to try and get a patch to fix the shut down problem off the internet. I'm guessing that it is a bug in their software.

I will try out the above suggestions. Thanks again.

I guess you're right about me misusing the phrase "Urban Myth". My computers would have to kill someone or do something really scary like emit microwaves to my kids brains to be a true urban myth.