Minor annoyance with W7 vs XP startup after power failure

[Essexinc]

Hi forum-folk! Got an application that used to run in an XP box that was routinely powered off without shutdown, and it simply powered right back up with no problem... Now that I'm on a different platform (different motherboard AND different OS), I find that the same sequence (power off; power on) does NOT produce the same results.... I get the "windows was not shut down properly" warning when power is restored... It's not a huge deal, just delays the restart process by 30 seconds...

In both instances I've got the "power on after power failure" setting in the BIOS set the same way - "power on after power failure"...

Any suggestion as to what I can do to disable the warning, or at least minimize the time before it goes ahead and starts normally?

Thanks much for any help any of you can offer!

Joe P

 

[gregrocker]

Please tell us what the application is and does, and why it needs to shut down this way?

As an aside you might want to try Hibernate which is very popular on my installs. Consumers like being able to close the lid, press the Power button (if set to Hibenate) or choose Hibernate from the Shut down menu, or let it time out to Sleep and then Hibernate, leaving work on the desktop if desired, without concern for when you come back since it will save everything to hard drive and then shut down. But it starts up twice as fast and puts everything back where you left it on desktop. With my SSD I have 5 second startups, and this post waiting to complete if I close the laptop lid and carry it across town.

 

[Essexinc]

The application is basically just a windows app that displays some info on-screen... The reason for the "power-off" shutdown is that the app runs without any mouse or keyboard attached, and relies on the arrival of a file via FTP to trigger the display process...There's no other interface... The pc is actually just a mini-itx board whose power supply is interrupted by a switch on the outside of the box....

Hope this helps!

Joe P

 

[gregrocker]

Sounds like it was written for XP if it would allow hard shutdowns for XP. But these are never advisable for Win7. I'd contact the author of the program to find out what he/she advises.

 

[Layback Bear]

This would be helpful.

By Brink:
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/180324-system-info-see-your-system-specs.html

In the bois of my Asus Motherboards their is a setting for what the computer should do after a power loss shut down.

I have it set to do nothing. Which allows me to choose how it starts when a problem like this occurs.

 

[Essexinc]

Thanks for the replies, guys!
Contacting the author should be pretty easy, as it's me (grin).... Is there anything that could be done in the code that would prevent this behavior? Short of providing some sort of human interface to allow for proper shutdown, (which isn't an option!), I really don't have any idea what I could do to "prepare ahead of time" for an eventual power interruption... My BIOS is set to "power on after power failure", and there's no connection to the startup pins, so, I'm counting on the BIOS setting to bring it back up....

Thanks again for your time!

Joe

 

[gregrocker]

Write a Win7 Shutdown into your script, which is at C:\Windows\System32\shutdown.exe -s -t 00

 

[Essexinc]

I think we're back to "how would this be triggered?" Under normal circumstances, the system would remain up all the time, either displaying what was sent, or waiting for the next bucket o' bits to arrive... Shutting the box off isn't a normally-occurring thing... But power interruptions DO happen, and more often when you put the switch in front of the user (grin!)
Anyway, without some mechanism to trigger the "shutdown -s -f -t 00" I'm still sort of stuck here... It's not a huge deal, just a 30-second delay waiting for the warning to time out.... Can that interval be changed?

Thanks again!

Joe

 

[gregrocker]

If you wrote the program that is now suffering a hard shutdown, then can you add the shutdown line to the script?

If not I would not operate a program that shuts the PC down hard. It might work 99 times but be catastrophic on the 100th.

 

[Essexinc]

I could add the shutdown line to the script, yes, but.... Under normal circumstances, I never want to shut it down, and.... given the absence of any user interface (no mouse, no keyboard), I can't expect the user to tell me when to shut it down....

Hmm... However.... Here's a thought: Since the only interface is via files being received via FTP... perhaps I could put code in the program to watch for a "special" file - say "killit.txt", for example, and trigger the shutdown line that way! This would at least give me a CHANCE to prevent hard power-offs.....

Thanks again for the suggestions!! I'll go give that a try.....

Joe

 

[gregrocker]

I missed why it needs to shut down at all? If it's a server then can you keep it running, perhaps rewrite the program so it never causes a hard shutdown?

Just noodling since this is way above my consumer specialist pay grade.

 

[Essexinc]

You're right, in the sense that it really shouldn't ever shut down, except for maintenance... Problem comes with having a power switch on the box that's accessible to the user.... Maybe that shouldn't be there! Perhaps having the power hard-wired would be a better approach, and just include a push-button INSIDE the box for start/stop? Might be a cleaner solution.....

Thanks again!

Joe

 

[Layback Bear]

Putting the power button inside the case should eliminate the accidental hitting of the power button.