General Discussion - Question???

Author

Question???

mrfixit

2003-06-26, 4:55 pm

Okay, I know I'm an "Almighty" Sys Admin and all that....

But this one has got me stumped (

) I have a user that I just set up a new desktop. Now, while it was in my posession it did not mess up once. Now that she has it, it wants to restart on shutdown. The OS is W2K Pro, and a standard load of software, (O2K Pro, McAfee, IE6, Outlook, and some company proprietary stuff.) The lady in the same office told me that her, (the lady that got this PC), old PC did the same thing. (???) I'm beginning to think we have gremlins in that office, as this is not the first "unusual" thing that has happened! (And this is only my 2nd week on the job!!

)

Any advice/comments would be appreciated.

mrfixit

MartyMcFly

2003-06-26, 5:23 pm

You using roaming profiles? If so it could be something in her profile, delete it and give her a new one

thecomeons

2003-06-26, 5:36 pm

if she has messed up two machines, maybe she just tinkers in places where she shouldn't be tinkering

RussS

2003-06-26, 6:21 pm

heh heh heh - make sure she has MINIMAL permissions. How often do we find that a machine fault is directly caused by an end user??

I would ask her very kindly and politely what she has changed and if the answer is nothing (most usually is), then I would set up a whole bunch of logging to find out exactly what she is doing.

mikop

2003-06-26, 6:24 pm

quote:
Originally posted by mrfixit
, it wants to restart on shutdown.

mrfixit

tell her not to press the power button to turn off the computer after she shut it down.

...

and if she really do that, omg, I think you are well within your rights to apply your officer hand to hand combat training on her.

mrfixit

2003-06-26, 6:56 pm

Thanks for the replies, but so far....

Nope, no roaming profile, and she does have "minimal" permissions. And I even looked at the PC and did a standard shutdown in Windows and as soon as it powered down, it powered itself right back up again! I remember something in Win98 where some machines did this, but can't find anything in TechNet to resolve the issue in W2K. Even went to the Dell website, (it's a Dell OptiPlex GX150), and not any help at all!! Funny thing is, I had it for 2 days while I installed the OS and all the software, and it didn't do this once! (So for now, the only answer is to have her actually shut off with the power button. Which causes a scandisk on each boot-up.)

I'll keep watching this thread in hopes that someone out there has had a similar experience and found the solution.

Thanks again!

mrfixit

mikop

2003-06-26, 7:20 pm

http://www.annoyances.org/exec/foru...000/r1021435358 specifically the 2nd paragraph

regarding win98 it was this
http://www.microsoft.com/windows98/...8SE/Default.asp just for your future reference

try command line to see if you can localize the problem

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/tr...cs/shutdown.asp

try various switches, does it shutdown if you select reboot in gui or cli.

anyway, the tip from annoyances seems to be it as the resolution/culprit was mentioned in other places also.

mrfixit

2003-06-26, 8:10 pm

quote:
Originally posted by mikop
http://www.annoyances.org/exec/foru...000/r1021435358 specifically the 2nd paragraph

regarding win98 it was this
http://www.microsoft.com/windows98/...8SE/Default.asp just for your future reference

try command line to see if you can localize the problem

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/tr...cs/shutdown.asp

try various switches, does it shutdown if you select reboot in gui or cli.

anyway, the tip from annoyances seems to be it as the resolution/culprit was mentioned in other places also.

Thanks for all the tips, I'll check it out when I go in tomorrow.

jkhnwspec

2003-06-26, 10:15 pm

mrfixit:

you might also take a look at this site even though it is for Windows NT.

http://is-it-true.org/nt/registry/rtips205.shtml

It seems, in some situations anyway (I had this happen to a machine I worked on) if this setting is "ON", that is set to what the author suggests, you can experience what you are describing. I had a Windows NT machine that had this turned on and it would do the same thing, act as if it was going to powerdown and it would restart itself. I changed the setting to 0 and it quit doing that. I've seen articles suggesting this same change be done to W2K machines that develop a difficulty in powering down after it has been told to shutdown. I believe this mostly applies to systems that have the older APM spec bios.

mrfixit

2003-06-27, 7:31 am

Thanks for the tip. I'll check that out too.

mrfixit

2003-06-27, 8:52 am

Tried all the above tips, nothing!

The thing still restarts itself on shutdown. The only thing that has changed between my office and her office is the location!! This is really beginning to P me off!!

But I guess it really doesn't hurt anything, she can either leave it up and running, or go through the shutdown and then press the power button on the desktop to shut it off. In the meantime, I will keep looking for some way to resolve this issue.

Thanks to everyone for their replies and tips.

DaPunisher

2003-06-27, 9:03 am

quote:
Originally posted by mrfixit
Tried all the above tips, nothing!
The thing still restarts itself on shutdown. The only thing that has changed between my office and her office is the location!! This is really beginning to P me off!!

But I guess it really doesn't hurt anything, she can either leave it up and running, or go through the shutdown and then press the power button on the desktop to shut it off. In the meantime, I will keep looking for some way to resolve this issue.

Thanks to everyone for their replies and tips.

I have had a similar situation recently, but my box would power down for no reason. At first, I thought it was the power supply, but then I discovered I had a really nasty boot sector virus. After blowing away my drive, it worked normally.

Have you looked at the Hardware Profile settings?

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