Laptop restarts instead of shutting down! Help...

[Epsil0n00]

So, this is an IBM ThinkPad running XPPro. When I try to shutdown, it just restarts. I have run PC Doctor and found nothing wrong with the hardware... plus the device manager is all clear of conflicts, etc. What could be causing this? Any help would be much appreciated!

Thanks!
Epsil0n

 

[ultimatebob]

Try unchecking "Automatically Restart" in the system menu under the startup and recovery tab. I have a hunch that Windows is crashing during shutdown, and it's automatically rebooting instead giving you the blue screen of death.

If it DOES give you a BSOD, try updating your BIOS and power managment drivers. They're available at the IBM PC support site, in the device driver matrix. Also, make sure to set the Windows XP laptop shutdown patch (I think that it's part of SP1 now), and update any networking software that you have. Older versions of Firewall software and VPN clients (like the AT&T Net Client) are known to have problems with Windows XP.

 

[Epsil0n00]

Thank you very much for the ideas! I will try them and let you know what I find.

 

[knutp]

Do you try to shut it down with the power button, or the start->turn off command.

If you try with the power button, there is an option in the powermanagemant if you want to shut it down or do other things.

But try to update the drivers and the bios first.

 

[Epsil0n00]

I turn it off using the shut-down option from the start menu. The BIOS has been updated... however, when I have tried to apply service pack 1 to the OS it says that the cyptography service is not running and it fails to update. This is such a weird problem... I might just format and start fresh. Any other ideas?

Oh, and I tried to use the event viewer to see what was happening during shutdown, but no relevant event are occuring... also, I enabled a small memory dump if there is an unexpected system hang, but this produced no results either. Hmmm...

 

[Supradude]

acpi on or off?

 

[Epsil0n00]

is that the same thing as "Hibernation"? I think that is what ACPI is right? Let me try disabling that feature and see what happens. BRB.

 

[Epsil0n00]

well, I just tried turning off hibernation but that didn't help. Man, I have no freakin clue what is going on with this unit. Did I mention that I tried to disable everything in MSConfig and boot with a clean system, it still did it! Ahhhhhh! Wierd.