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from the Have-you-tried-turning-it-off-and-restarting... dept.
Windows 7 will not go gentle into that good night: Ageing OS refuses to shut down:
It's not only end of support that Windows 7 diehards have to contend with. Late last week a new problem emerged – systems that refuse to shut down.
Complaints have been widespread on Reddit, Microsoft's official Answers forum and on on SevenForums. Some users also reported other issues, such as not being able to view their documents folder in Explorer.
Fortunately the problem seems to be fixable in most cases. The favourite solution is to tweak the UAC (User Account Control) settings with the Group Policy setting "Run all administrators in Admin Approval Mode" or the equivalent registry setting. Then run gpupdate/force, and everything goes back to normal.
There are other workarounds, such as using shutdown from the command prompt, or logging off and then shutting down.
This does not explain the reason for the problem, which appeared mysteriously on or around 7 February. There may be a clue in two other popular fixes.
Have any Soylentils run into this problem? How did you get around it?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by fustakrakich on Wednesday February 12 2020, @04:59PM (11 children)
*Pulls plug*
I'm sorry, what?
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Freeman on Wednesday February 12 2020, @05:10PM (8 children)
There's that and the press and hold the power button, which essentially does the same thing.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday February 12 2020, @05:28PM (6 children)
It's not equivalent if you are on a laptop with non-empty battery (which is likely if it was just plugged in).
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday February 12 2020, @05:40PM (3 children)
It depends on how the hardware was designed. Typically, pressing and holding the power button does a forced shutdown, equivalent to pulling the plug, but possibly less likely to cause harm to the hardware. As opposed to, pressing the power button and letting go which would likely make it go into sleep mode on a laptop or initiate a software shutdown on a desktop. There's usually configuration options in the OS that let you decide what happens when you press the power button, but pressing and holding the power button is a hardware thing.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday February 12 2020, @06:02PM (2 children)
I wasn't arguing the functionality of the power button. I was arguing the functionality of pulling the plug.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday February 12 2020, @08:56PM (1 child)
Same functionality - you just need to pull the plug from the power source. Which in the case of a laptop is NOT the wall.
Granted, it seems like an ever-increasing number of laptops make it non-trivial to unplug the battery...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 12 2020, @09:25PM
Pulling the plug is much more reliable. The power button is still implemented by software. Granted it's not Microsoft's software, but it's software nonetheless.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday February 12 2020, @08:08PM (1 child)
Then, if for some reason the power-button move doesn't work, remove the battery. And if none of those work, a sledgehammer will put an end to your lousy laptop that won't obey the demands of you, it's owner.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Immerman on Wednesday February 12 2020, @08:58PM
>your lousy laptop that won't obey the demands of you, it's owner.
A computer always follows the demands of its owner. If it's not following your commands, then you're not the owner.
And yes, that pretty much rules out computers running Windows, MacOS, Android, iOS, etc.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Wednesday February 12 2020, @08:20PM
4 second delay
Not fast enough! [youtube.com]
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Wednesday February 12 2020, @08:51PM
My understanding is that shutdown.exe works as well.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 13 2020, @01:59AM
"It's now safe to turn off your computer."