PC restarts on shutdown

[MHWadester]

The last day something unusual has started happening to my computer.. when ever i click shutdown from the start menu or shut down the computer in any way it restarts basically immediately after. The only way i have found to shutdown my computer is by unplugging the power or turning of the switch on the power supply which works temporarily but when i replug or connect it back to power it boots or restarts. Now this happened a while ago to me when i had xp and supposedly got fixed when i installed windows 7. I have tried a few things to fix it such as:
- Turn of wakeup options for network adapter in the device manager.
- Turned of automatic restart on failure in system restore and power management.
- Tried a system restore to a previous date.
- Turned off any wakeup options in bios.

Its also weird because my computer was working completely fine until yesterday when it started happening and i havnt installed anything new in the last few days so i dont see why it would just start doing this randomly.

anyway any help would be much appreciated... its not a major problem but enough to bug and annoy me so i want to fix it without reinstalling windows 7 because i dont want to do that and would be a big pain considering all the stuff i have to reinstall and find.

 

[Petey7]

Before we start trouble shooting I'm going to concentrate on giving some info. wakeup refers to waking the computer from sleep, not turning it on, so those settings shouldn't change anything. In case they are you can type "powercfg -devicequery wake_armed" in command prompt to see if any hardware can wake the computer.

I'm not sure if this would cause the problem, and others can say whether it would or not, but it sounds like a problem with the power switch on the front of the computer. I'll look into it a bit and hopefully someone else will be along soon that can also help.

 

[Petey7]

Okay, I found something. Unplug the power cord from the power supply. Make sure to touch something metal before or during the following steps. Its also a good idea to not be standing on carpet. We don't want an static electrical discharge. Open the case and look for the wire going from the power button to the motherboard. Take the time to memorize where the cable plugs in at. Unhook the cable. Put everything else back how it was and plug the computer back in. Write back to tell us what happens or if you have more questions to ask before doing this.

 

[MHWadester]

just a little question concerning your last post when i unplug the cable from the motherboard to power should i leave it unplugged or replug it in?

 

[Tews]

If you dont plug it back in, how is your computer supposed to power up??

 

[MHWadester]

yeh stupid me well i tried to do that but the cable to the power button is kinda blocked off and really hard to get to without removing other cables so can you pose any other solution.... any help would be appreciated.

 

[Petey7]

As to the question you asked earlier, I wanted you to leave the power button unplugged until after you plugged the computer back in to see if it started without the power button attached. If it didn't, then you would need to reattach it and you would have your answer. I did some looking and a few web articles agree that it could be the cause. But we can try other stuff by all means.

See if your BIOS has a resume on power interrupt option. It could be misinterpreting the computer shutting down. You can also check to be sure the PSU is properly connected the motherboard. Does your computer have a remote to it? If the question sound crazy, ignore it. You can also try updating/flashing the BIOS, which might have become corrupted. A few sources claim components with a wake option can turn the computer on after shut down, but you already turned most of those off.

 

[MHWadester]

yeh i have thought about updating my bios but i dont want to take any risks and screw up my bios.... My computer doesnt have a remote... im pretty sure the PSU is connected correctly to my motherboard and its hard to unplug the cable that connects to the power button because is in a hard to get location. Also concerning the bios i have checked it numerous times for options that have to do with power and disabled all the ones that i have found but still happens.
The weird thing is my computer was running perfectly fine like 2 days ago and i havnt really installed anything new since then that i can think of and now its just doing this happens to do this randomly... thanks for the help keep it coming i want to fix this.
PS: just a little info on something i found when messing around with a few things... sometimes when it restarts the fans go full speed and it doesnt load in that case i have to restart again

 

[Petey7]

It sounds to me like the BIOS has been corrupted. If you can give me an exact model number for your mobo I will find the BIOS download for you. If you can't start the update from within Windows, copy it to a flash drive or CD and run it from that. I know you've probably heard the horror stories about BIOS flashes going horribly wrong, but 99.99% of the time they go just fine. There have been a couple people on here with weird hardware problems that saw all there problems go away with a BIOS update in the past couple weeks alone.

The symptoms also fit with the power button being worn out. You can decided which fix you want to try first, but doing neither leaves you where you are. At least the BIOS flash is an actual fix, not just a test.

 

[MHWadester]

well i looked into this before but didnt want to continue i found the upgrades for it but again didnt want to try anything i didnt know how to do. Motherboard = GIGABYTE MA790XT-UD4P, the company is award, im pretty sure the version of it is f3. Can you also tell me how to backup if possible and also a guide on how to actually update/flash bios because i want to take all the precautions and know what i am doing dont want to screw my bios... thanks for help

 

[Petey7]

I've never backed up a BIOS before, so I can't really recommend anything. Any time I've done it on a Dell (the only ones I've done it on) just double clicking the downloaded bios file was all I had to do, and the computer did the rest. Looking at the Gigabyte site, it seems to be the same. The newest version is a F8 beta. Since its a beta I recommend the F7. Here is a link to the page for your product on their website:
GA-MA790XT-UD4P (rev. 1.0) - GIGABYTE - Support&Download - Motherboard - BIOS

The main thing I recommend for making sure everything goes smoothly is to try not to do it during weather conditions that can lead to a power outage and leave the computer alone while its doing its thing. Absolutely do not touch any buttons or touch the power cord unless asked to by a prompt on the screen.

 

[MHWadester]

how long does it usually take to do?

 

[Petey7]

It depends on the computer. I think my dads took around 20 minutes, but its been a year since I did it. A lot of places I look at say 2-10 minutes, depending on the bios chip and other hardware. Do you have another computer you can use in the rare case something goes wrong? Do you have a USB you can back the file up on?

 

[MHWadester]

well i do have a and old laptop i could use but id prefer not too considering its ancient and i also have a usb flash and external hard drive.... how would i back it up do i need to download anything else?

 

[Petey7]

Just copy it to the flash drive. The old laptop could be useful in a worst case scenario. I think you should go ahead a do the bios update. Let it run like it needs to and absolutely don't interrupt it unless someone advises you to.

 

[MHWadester]

so it wont be a big file? and how do would i copy bios to a flash drive does it prompt me for backup on update?

 

[Petey7]

Maybe we are misunderstanding each other. Go to the site I linked to earlier. Download the F7 or F8 and make a copy of that .exe on to your flash drive just so you have it in case something goes wrong. There are ways to redo the bios update from a flash drive. I don't think you'll need it, but I want to air on the side of caution since you feel a little uncomfortable with it. You shouldn't need to back up the current one if you have told me the right motherboard. A back-up of the current bios is only used when a person is unsure of what mobo they have.

 

[MHWadester]

oh ok ill do that... just before i do though, you said "There are ways to redo the bios update from a flash drive." how do i actually do that ? do i just plug in the flash drive and it loads from there or something?

 

[Petey7]

That is my understanding, based on what I have read. Since you are getting a full .exe you should be able to do it that way. I just checked and it looks like you need to format the flash drive as FAT or FAT32. Format it if necessary.

 

[MHWadester]

how do you do that? sorry for all the stupid questions