What is the difference between shutting of the computer at the various power buttons?

[neonblueshadow]

(please let me know if I should post this in another thread)
What is the difference between:
- shutting the computer off with the front power button ,
- the reset button,
- and the power supply shut off switch.

Specifically, I would like to know the difference in what is saved and not saved with each option. Is the memory cleared in one of the options while being saved in another?

Depending on the answer I can hopefully narrow down the issue to motherboard, RAM or HDD. ( and I don't think its the RAM)

(If you're curious about what led me to this question...)
Reason:
Something snapped yesterday (not literally, i just don't know the cause yet) and computer has had trouble staying on for more than a few minutes if I run any application , or web browsers (its fine idling, or doing basic windows functions like file transfer...backing up the machine as I'm typing this.). The result is a BSOD, and an immediate restart , which leads to the computer to encounter another BSOD while windows is attempting to boot up.

This cycle will continue until I shut down the machine at the power supply shut off, and restart it. And then there is a chance it will go through the start up sequence without issue (minus the normal and expected windows complaints about last start up attempt failing etc.)

Additional complications:
On some start sequences:
- the USB ports do not function, the computer complains about detecting no keyboard.
- The computer will freeze during the sequence ( this appears to be time dependent , since after x time it occasionally freeze in the BIOS itself)

- Asus's express gate, which this machine goes through before touching windows, occasionally complains that its not installed correctly and that it requires an installation repair. ( this is interesting since I don't think express gate uses any part of of my HDD....)


Lastly, a similar issue has happened once before and I ended up reformatting the hard drive completely and re-installing windows, which seemingly fixed the issue for about 2 months before it suddenly happened again yesterday. Whatever caused that initial BSOD screws up something big....

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Your PSU is failing, prolly.

 

[ky54]

Let's see - these are the default settings in Win 7:

shut off on PSU - you're essentially crashing the computer.

Shut off button on front of the case - Win 7 will save most work and shut off

Reset button on case will act like the Restart button when when you restart computer in Windows.

The case buttons can be changed in Win 7 by going to Control Panel>System and Security>Power Options> Change what the power buttons do.

To your problem - is your computer making any noise at all just before it crashes? Can you hear the fans spinning and have you opened the case while its running to see if all of your fans are running especially the heatsink fan?

 

[neonblueshadow]

Hi, thanks for your responses. The computer does not many any sounds out of the ordinary prior to crashing. I have been logging the temperature, and I check the logs after I restart, the thermal management appears to be just fine.

Also to clarify, I was more interested in what is saved regarding the start up sequence, specifically, why does the computer need a hard shut down at the PSU to be able to get through the start up sequence w/o issues, and why does it not work if i just press the power button on the front? I'm suspecting something is being saved somewhere that doesn't get cleared until the PSU is turned off. And if so, which component is it being saved in? The RAM is cleared everytime the computer shuts off in any way right?