It seems at work when you go to your start button on the PC (lower left hand corner) you hit the shut down button and it does it thing.
Then for about 1 second it says “It’s safe to shut down your computer” then it immediately starts up again. I am not hitting the restart. My guess is someone programmed it to do that.
Does anyone know where on the computer is the setting to change this? I want it to say “It’s now safe to shut off your computer” and NOT restart it.
It is possibly a setting in the registry. Depending on how long it has been doing this you can restart in MS-DOS mode and run “scanreg /restore” (without quotes) and pick a date that it was working properly. That is usually only good to do if the problem is less than 2 week old. I have been able to find things like that in the registry before. I will check it out and try and get back to you.
If Windows 98, you can also go to Start -> Run, and type “msconfig” (again without quotes) and click OK. Click the Advanced button at the bottom right and put a check in the box next to “Disable fast shutdown.”
You might also look at the BIOS settings. Mine has a “return to last state” option for power interruptions, LAN requests, and modem rings. Are you on a network?
It also may be your power supply starting to flake out.
Thanks for the replies so far. Let me clear one thing up. This isn’t my computer this is every single computer in the office. It has to be some kind of programming.
You see if you don’t shut the computer off in that one second when the computer says it’s OK to it starts up. Now what’s happening is everyone is so sick of waiting for that one second, they just turn the computer off. Of course that means the next morning you get the message “You’re computer was not shut down properly…Do you wish to run scan disk.” Most of them don’t. This can’t be good for the computers.
So what I need is a way so the computer gets to the point where it says “It’s safe to shut off your computer” and doesn’t start up. I mean as it is now the Shut Down button and the restart button are the same thing virtually.
Thanks guys
when I select shutdown, I get a menu giving me the option to shut down completely, startup again etc.
You don’t get that?
Markxxx, these don’t happen to be new Gateway computers, are they?
It does sound like a BIOS thing. But about waiting for it to boot all the way up before you shut it down again. You can power off the computer anytime before the Windows 98 splash screen. So when it starts to boot back up, just shut it off.
Unless this system has a hard power off switch, not usually seen on anything newer than a petium 166, it sounds like the power management has been disabled on the system.
Usually on systems that just have a soft push on/off button(as opposed to an actual on off switch that physically kills the power)
Windows should shut the power clear off and not even show the “Its safe to shut off your power screen”
You could check the Power Management options in the control panel.
You could also check Device Manager, set it to show devices by connection.
Advance Power Management should be the first item under Computer.
If its there, remove it. Reboot the system.
Go to Add New Hardware in the control panel and run the wizard. It should redetect and reinstall the APM.
The computers are all Compaqs. I also get the shut down menu with the option to shut down. There in lies the problem. If you select shut down it doesn’t. It only says for literally one second “it’s now safe to shut down your computer.” if you don’t do it during that second, it’ll restart just as if you hit the restart.
The menu is the one under the shut down menu with the Shut Down, Restart, Restart in MS DOS mode and the Shut down and log on as a different user.
I see this one a lot, as i work for Micro$haft. If you are running windows 98 second edition, go to http://www.microsoft.com/Windows98/downloads/contents/WURecommended/S_WUFeatured/Win98SE/ and download the file there, and run it. That will fix your problem! 
“Through twilight, darkness and moonrise
My scarlet tears will run
As stolen blood and whispered love
Of fantasies undone”
you don’t have to necessarily shut it down when it says “its now safe to turn off your computer”
if you’re shutting it down and it restarts instead, you can just hit the power button at the first screen that tells you what kind of video card you have (you know, that screen that first comes on as soon as you boot up the computer).
Well Mark, without knowing what operating system you are using its kinda hard.
here are some possible reasons:
A video card that is not assigned an IRQ in real mode.
An program or terminate-and-stay-resident (TSR) program may not close correctly.
An incompatible, damaged, or conflicting device driver is loaded.
A damaged Exit Windows sound file.
Incorrectly configured or damaged hardware.
An incompatible Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) configuration setting.
An Advanced Power Management or Advanced Configuration and Power Interface setting.
The Fast Shutdown registry key is enabled.Thanks for the help guys. So far nothing has worked. But I KNOW it has to be programmed into the computer or the network as EVERY SINGLE computer does this.
If one or two did it you could write it off to a computer being off, but not some 30 odd computers.
On another note just how much damage are people doing by shutting the computer down. Every day virtually everyone comes up with that your computer wasn’t shut down properly message. It gives you an option to then run scan disk which I know no one does. Either that or it comes up in safe mode.
Mark, I don’t know what operating system still. Also, with 30 computers, Im sure you could hire a tech for $75 for the one hour it would take to find out. Or you could take one in to the store & ask them.
There are just too many possible things it could be, too many operating systems, bioses, etc. If you can get into the bios,
find the power saving management section, see if you have something like, ‘on shut down’ & it should have selections, you want it to be selected to, ALL OFF. So the computer goes oFF when you select shut down from the menu.