stuck at 'now safe to turn your computer off' WinXP fix

onelin

Senior member
Dec 11, 2001
874
0
0
Hey,

I've run into this issue on two ATX systems after an install w/ motherboard change or reinstall replacing a previous version of windows that did auto shut off properly.

What worked for me to get the ATX auto-shutoff to kick in was:
going into the device manager, view->show hidden devices,
NT Apm/Legacy Support (this was opened with it's child, NT Apm/Legacy Interface Node) disabled. Right clicked on the node one, enable. waited...hit ok. It worked the first shutoff.

For the record, ACPI does NOT have to be on for this to work. What made it such a strange issue is it works on most systems with ACPI off, but apparently on randomly chosen ones it does not. I've even heard stories of Microsoft tech support stating there is no fix for this.

note: On the system I'm typing this on, I don't even have an "NT Apm/Legacy Support" portion in my tree with show hidden on, but it also wasn't the one with the issue.

Props to BmXStuD's post in the archives that pointed out most of the specifics but not the right name on this machine.

I still have to test this on the second system this happened to, but it's an hour away from me.

Hope someone finds this helpful, figured a repost was better than drudging up archived posts with a reply.
 

Netopia

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
4,793
4
81
YOU SIR ARE AWESOME!!!!

You just helped me fix two Win2K boxes that I've always been sent to "Now Safe To Turn Off Your Computer" hell when shutting down.

GREAT tip!

Joe
who is very appreciative!