PC Won't Shut Down

[DonJuan]

Hi,
A few months ago, I started having mildly annoying issue with my PC. Any time I try to shut down my computer, either by going to start --> shut down, or just by trying to manually power down the computer by pressing and holding down the power button, my computer instead reboots. For these past few months I've had to power down the PC by flipping the switch in the back. I've reformatted my hard drive a couple times since then, and the problem still persists, so I've pretty much isolated it to it being a hardware issue. A friend of mine found somewhat of a solution to the problem. Apparently if I open up my PC and disconnect the DVD drive manually, I can shut down my PC normally without any problems, however this isn't really a viable solution for me since I use my DVD drive fairly often. Also, I know the problem can't be related to the DVD drive since I've tested this with two different DVD drives, and the problem persisted with both of them. My friend thinks it may be an issue with the hard drive. Any thoughts on what could be causing this?

 

[Ph30nIX]

Well if it keeps turning on try checking your BIOS for WakeonLan options or wake on modem etc and try disabling them.

 

[kimsland]

Apparently if I open up my PC and disconnect the DVD drive manually, I can shut down my PC normally

Say what ?
Please don't do that anymore, it is also not good advice for too many reasons to say !

Go to your system bios (either F2 or DEL or F10 or other, whichever message comes up at bootup)
Go to power management - and enable it
Save and exit

Also check in Windows in Control Panel - Poer - for any power management enabling

Still problems, have the power supply checked out

 

[DonJuan]

I checked out my BIOS settings and under Power Management options, there was no option to enable or disable Power Management. These were the options available to me under Power Management, along with their current settings:

ACPI Suspend Type ----> S1(PowerON-Suspend)
Power Button Function ----> Instant-Off
WakeUp by PME# of PCI ----> Disabled
Wakeup by Ring ----> Disabled
Wakeup by Alarm ----> Disabled
Power On Function ----> BUTTON ONLY
Restore on AC Power Loss ----> Power Off

 

[Ph30nIX]

Settings seem fine to me. Try going from scratch here. Take out all components so you are left with the basics (1 stick of ram if you have more than one), and your OS hard drive. Leave off any secondary hard drives, dvd burners or usb peripheals.

If it does manage to shutdown, keep adding components until the problem occurs, and you can nail it down to one (if you have a hardware failure).

If the problem still continues, try a virus scan of oyur whole hard drive, including boot sector, and check for any spyware etc.

If these seem to fail, perhaps try a reinstall of XP ( I assume your using XP) and see how that goes. If thats not really an option for you, try getting a small second hard disk and do it on that.

Nic.

 

[DonJuan]

Heh, I'm not gonna dismantle my entire PC over it. I'm not hardware savvy at all, so that option is out of the question for me. I'm starting to lean towards thinking it's a power supply issue. But then why would the PSU work fine when the DVD drive isn't plugged in? My friend thinks it's a hard drive issue, but I dunno. I'm 100% positive that this is not virus/spyware related, since I've formatted my hard drive within the past few months and the problem still persisted. It has to be a hardware issue, I just don't know what. Process of elimination does not sound very appealing.

 

[DonJuan]

I know it can't be a problem with the DVD drive either, since I've tested two different DVD drives and the problem persisted with both of them.

 

[kimsland]

What about DVD Drive data cable