Windows 7 won't restart or shutdown when Power Plan changes are made.

Ranger4 said:

@OverDose. Are you using the Samsung Magician software?. Normally Samsung SSDs use the High Performance setting. I think you may have a conflict with your power plan settings that are in conflict with the Samsung setting.

Have you had a look at all the power settings under the Advanced section in Windows power Plan settings. My Samsung 750 pro SSD uses the High Performance setting & I do have the Samsung Magician software installed as well. With the version of Magician that I have I can make changes to some settings.

Hi Ranger4, I haven't as yet installed the Samsung Magician software on this desktop, however I do have it installed on another desktop machine that I use for gaming and other multimedia applications.

I will actually give that suggestion a try and see if the Samsung Magician doesn't help with allowing the desktop to be changed to the High Performance plan.

Thanks for that, cos I'd actually completely forgot about that software.

Seen many cases that Samsung Magician was more part of the problem than part of a solution.

Megahertz07 said:

Seen many cases that Samsung Magician was more part of the problem than part of a solution.

@Megahertz07 - Noted. However, as I stated on my other desktop, I have had no issues so far while Samsung Magician is installed. So any other insights on this particular situation would be welcomed, if you have any.

In the meantime, I'm still at a stage where I can troubleshoot enough to not mind doing a clean re-install of whatever software I've loaded to date.

So speak now or forever hold your peace.

@OverDose:
- Did you open device manager to see if there is any missing drivers?
- Did you run system file check (sfc /scannow)?

Ranger4 said:

@OverDose. What version of the Samsung Magician have you got. I have version 4.9.5 which allows you to customise the SSD if you wish. Version 4.9.5 is not the latest version as later versions don't seem to allow any customisation.

To find out what version your Magician is, open it & look for a menu at the bottom of the Magician window & click on Magician Info

@Ranger4 - Nope it's not Samsung Magician. It still did the same problem with or without Samsung Magician, and I was using v4.9.5.

Megahertz07 said:

@OverDose:
- Did you open device manager to see if there is any missing drivers?
- Did you run system file check (sfc /scannow)?

@Megahertz07 - It don't have any missing drivers in device manager (I always make sure of this). And I ran (sfc /scannow) even before I came to Seven Forums and it didn't detect any issues.

@Ranger4 @Megahertz07 - Right! I have some clarity on what might be causing the issue. So while we've been chatting back and forth on here troubleshooting, I was more annoyed than anything else as to what could be doing this, since honestly, this is not my first OS install, and I have never experienced such odd behavior.

So I opted to do a clean install of Windows 7 ultimate 64 bit, and then what I did this time round is to set the "High Performance" plan in Windows 7 to active, early on during the install of the base / system drivers. My reasoning was that as I progress through the installs, and the prompted or forced restarts after some installs, I would become apparent what is causing the issue to occur.

I went ahead and installed most system drivers, and other 3rd party system utilities and everything was still on "High Performance" and restarting or shutting down just fine. One of the last installs I did this time around was the driver for my audio interface that I'm using (an ESI ESP1010 PCI sound card), and that installed fine as well. I then checked that that the system was using the ESP1010 sound card and not the system Realtek audio device (would not give me sound since my monitor speakers are connected to the ESP1010 card) and I got sound just fine out of everything and adjusted a few of the ESP1010 control panel settings.

And then it was time to restart and **BOOM**, problem surfaced again. So I immediately suspect that the last available driver from the ESI website is causing this problem.

Now it was time to double check that my suspicion was indeed correct, so I did the following uninstalls:

1) Disabled the Realtek audio device (system still hangs at restart and shutdown)
2) Uninstalled Realtek audio drivers (system still hangs at restart and shutdown)
3) Uninstalled the HD Audio device drivers bundled with the nVidia graphics card driver (system still wouldn't restart or shut down
4) Then I uninstalled the ESI ESP1010 audio drivers from the system, and that yielded a system that restarts and shuts down as it should.

All of this was done while I was using the "High Performance" plan.

And as a sidenote, even when I installed the Samsung Magician software and set the power plan to High Perfomance using that software (before installing the ESP1010 audio driver), the system was restarting and shutting down fine. So the issue is not there.

So for now I suspect that that is the problem.

I have already e-mailed ESI support and I have detailed my steps with my 2nd install, and how I reached a point of isolating the problem. So I am still waiting for them to respond.

I just hope that they will get back to me with a workable solution, since I am installing a DAW machine and can't use it without this hardware and I'm not really intending on selling it for any reason, as it is a very good sound card.

I will revert with any feedback on whether they came with a solution or not from their side at ESI.

Thanks for the ideas and help so far.