I recently upgraded my old POS computer from W95 to W98. Before I installed 98, when I selected Shut Down, the machine would turn itself off when it completed its shutdown procedures. However, once I got 98 up and running, it would run to the point where it’d say “It is now safe to turn off your computer” and I’d have to lean waaaaaaaay over to power down. Yeah, it’s not that big a deal, but I did manage to forget it a couple of times and leave that last screen up all night.
If it makes a difference, my computer is a Toshiba, 200MHZ, black (well, Click and Clack always ask the car color)
So, can anyone tell me if I can make it turn itself off again? And if so, how?
Thanks.
There should be no screen after the computer tells you it’s now safe to shut off. You can turn the power off or not. Your preference. There is much debate which is the better thing to do. If you still have a screen after that notice, something is wrong.
Look in the control panel under DISPLAY, SCREEN SAVER, POWER, ADVANCED and see if there is a selection about what the computer will do when you press the power button.
barbitu8 - it hangs on the “…safe to turn off…” screen and stays there till I power down. It used to turn itself off after that screen came up
carnivorousplant - tried, but no joy
Nametag - I thought I found the answer there, but no luck. Of course, it could be hidden in that I didn’t understand a lot of what I read - I’m a user, not much of a techie.
Anyone else have any ideas? It’s not all that big a deal - more a matter of curiosity now. My husband has the same version of W98 on his laptop and it shuts down just fine on its own.
I just found a solution for this problem on my boss’ work computer. In her case, it was an out-of-date device driver. I ran Windows Update, updated all the drivers one-by-one, and found it was the sound card driver. Maybe that’s worth a try?
This is a very common problem with Windows 98. Have you run all Recommended Updates from the Windows Update site? Some of them deal with shutdown issues.
You also might want to run msconfig, hit Advanced and check or uncheck Disable fast shutdown. Sometimes this will make a difference. It won’t appear if you’ve already run certain Microsoft patches though.
Well, our #2 computer still has Windows 95 on it, and it has always hung on the “It is now safe to turn off your computer” screen. Ever since we’ve had it, (I guess that would be since 1995), you’ve had to reach over and hit the Power button to turn it off. I didn’t know it was possible to have it shut itself off.
As it happened, I just did a Windows update, but I still can’t get it to shut itself off. I unclicked the Disable Fast Shutdown, and I got into a loop where the machine would keep restarting itself.
Well, it’s not that big a deal… I can afford to waste several seconds an evening waiting, waiting, waiting until it’s safe to turn my computer off.
Thanks for the suggestions anyway. I was hoping it’d be a simple fix, not requiring any thought on my part. But reading the stuff on the Microsoft site gave me a headache, and I’m just paranoid enough not to want to mess with it any more. It ain’t worth it.
First off, I think the automatic shutdown is a modification by Toshiba for its laptops. I think newer desktops may do it, but not older ones. Therefore I suspect that you installed a generic version of Win98 and it doesn’t do it.
Second, I would be very leery about installing the “recommended updates”. I have a Toshiba laptop that I bought about 4 years ago with Win98 installed. After about a year, during which I did install some recommended upgrades of the OS, it was showing multiple problems so severe that I bit the bullet and wiped the disk and reinstalled the OS. It worked well enough for a while (never perfectly) and I tried the upgrades once more and it started behaving badly again. So I rewiped the disk and reinstalled the OS and, immediately, the upgrades and all the old problems reappeared. So wiped the disk a third time and reinstalled the OS and no upgrades. It still is not perfect and a year ago, I gave up and bought a Dell. But that is a whole nother story. To make a long story short, I returned the Dell and would not go near another one ever (want to hear, “Thank you for calling Dell, your call is important to us” every 15 seconds for an hour followed by a hangup?) and bought another Toshiba. I can’t say I am totally happy with it, but it mostly works.
Bottom line: A laptop has its own modified version of the OS and it is dangerous to install generic upgrades. It ought to be OK if you download it from a Toshiba site, but I am not sure they provide these upgrades.
I believe - although I’m not certain - that older bios’s do not support the auto-shutdown feature. That being said, we have about 300 identical Toshiba desktops here at work, and some of them auto-shutdown every time, some never do, and some do it occasionally… so maybe it’s just that toshiba and/or microsoft are crap…
FairyChatMom, there are TWO power contol centers, one is in the Bios & one in Windoz. If you start the computer & look at the Bios screen for power options, there should be a setting to turn it on/off/suspend/resure etc, etc. Let me know if you see anything like that there.
Shutdown problems are common with Windows 98, especially W98 Second Edition. Whichever you are running, first make sure you have turned off “Fast Shutdown.”
Click Start, point to Programs, point to Accessories, point to System Tools, and then click System Information.
On the Tools menu, click System Configuration Utility.
On the General tab, click Advanced.
Click to select the Disable Fast Shutdown check box, click OK, and then click OK.
Click Yes when you are prompted to restart your computer.
Let the computer reboot, and then test it by shutting down again.
If Fast Shutdown is disabled and the computer still doesn’t shut down properly, there is a software fix for Second Edition ONLY! You can download it here: