Two minor niggles which are driving me up the wall.

1. When I want to shut down using the standard method (start/shut down etc) the pc goes through the shut down proceedure, and then automatically starts up again !!! The only way I can turn everything off is to depress the power button for 4 seconds

Where do I change this? (looked in the bios settings - and its set to instant off)

2. I have a floppy problem - (don,t even go there, its been said already LOL)
If i put in a disc, it reads it and tells me what is on it (say a picture or word doc. for example) but if i click on the picture it cannot open it (after trying for a few minutes), then it emits horrible noises like a chattering.
I have replaced the floppy drive, swapped the cables around and it still does it. Windows is reporting that the device is working correctly and - as it does it on the replacement floppy drive too I think it must be something other than that (mainboard problem?)

This is the pc I am going to donate to the school appeal so would like everything to work - at least at the begining LOL

Thanks

Paul

Paul go to "Control Panel" >>>"Power Option">>>Advanced tab....make sure you have the Power buttons setting set for Shut down and Stand by. Go to Hibernate tab and insure "Enable Hibernation" is NOT checked. You may want to see what your Power Schemes is set at also, mine are set for "Always On" and "Never". Now for as far as your floppy,well, that sounds like you got a personal problem, hope the lady don't find out....sorry had to go there!!!! last time remember???? It may not be your 3.5" diskette drive but the diskette itself. It seems the diskettes here in Thailand are not that great no matter who made them. I have been finding many bad diskettes. I have even found some that will work in one computer and not work in others. Check the diskette and see if it works in other computers. Run a virus check on them also, if you don't see a A:\boot drive, then it's the diskette. Some how the boot drive for the diskette got erased.


Pop's

Cliff, in the good old days when I used to have a 3.5 " floppy I would quite often get the same problem that Paul describes - could see the file on the disk but couldn't open it. It was always bad sectors on the disk. Norton used to make some special floppy disk utilities which would repair the file in 9 cases out of 10 as well as 'mark' bad sectors on a disk so that the computer would not try and use them any more.
Paul, I am sure that these utilities are free somewhere on the net now, might be worth a look and running them against the disk to see if it is faultyather than try and fix a disk drive problem that isn't there.

Update:
Did the things mentioned for the auto shutdown and it still restarts automatically I had done this previously but did it again exactly as Cliff stated and it still restarts) so back to the head scratching

Re the floppy (no don't even think about it Cliff)

I am begining to think that it is a bad floppy disc as most of the discs I try are now opening normally however one of them is still making it chatter on exit. This is because I am having to eject it whith the light on - otherwise its never going to stop trying to read it. other discs are now reading ok and ejecting ok so we are a little advanced than earlier in the evening however one disc read ok and when ejected the drive started chattereing again
The floppy discs I am trying are nothing important so I am not going to try to reapir them. I have moved on now and don't really use floppies anymore, just wanted everything to work prior to delivery.

Thanks for the replies guys

Paul

Paul try this for the auto restarts....since Win XP if pretty fast you won't see the "Blue Screen Of Death" hince you won't know what is causing the restarts..I assume you are are using the Win XP OS. "START">>>"My Computer">>>>"View system information">>>>"Advanced">>>>"Startup and Recovery". Check to see if "Automatically restart" is check, if so uncheck. Test to see if it restarts automatically or if you get the "Blue Screen of Death".

Pop's

well did exactly the above - and ............
it automatically restarted !

So can we therefore assume that it is not restarting because of a system failure (ie blue screen of death)?? and there is another reason for it doing so (but what)

Thanks for your perseverence.

Paul

Until Pop's comes up with the next installment, try looking here

http://www.windowsnetworking.com/articl ... tdown.html

I had an XP comp that did the same as described, it turned out to be incompatible hardware

John

I have put that link on my favorite lisk, thanks John.

Pop's

Ok - followed the link and assumed it was a hardware compatiability problem so........
changed the mouse- no change, keyboard - no change, diconneceted the printer - no change, then the speakers - no change !!!!

Next, when I have time will be to disconnect individually the cd player and cdrw player and then the modem. If all is the same after that - then I will pull the rest of my hair out - which won't take all that long actually

Begining to run out of ideas here guys - am I going to have to take it to the shop ?

Yours frustratingly

Paul

If you do go to a shop, please please tell me one that you trust!!!

When SWMBO had her internet place, on one occasion a comp came back with half the RAM it went in with (try proving it!) and on another occasion one came back with no IDE cable connecting the hard drive, not disconnected, no cable!!

After that, I got the jobs!!

Rant Over!

However, it seems that you have tried everything, did you download and update all the drivers is my last shot at it?

Pops??

John

well everything is onboard (sound Graphics etc) so there aren't that many drivers required !
I have looked at the hardware profile and there are no 'obvious' conflicts and no yellow error triangles, so short of doing what I said before and disconnecting each item in turn - I am running short of ideas. I could try to find the type of mainboard I guess and see if there is a driver on the net???

And yes I use a shop in the complex who I have used for a couple of years - ever since I built a good relationship when I had an internet shop - so I have every faith in them and their technician is a whiz kid.

Paul

Paul wrote:I have looked at the hardware profile and there are no 'obvious' conflicts and no yellow error triangles, so short of doing what I said before and disconnecting each item in turn - I am running short of ideas. I could try to find the type of mainboard I guess and see if there is a driver on the net???

Yes you are going to need to update drivers for the mainboard and update the bios if its available before you can say you have exhausted all the possibilities.

You don't see hardware conflicts showing up, or warnings, or at least I did'nt. In my case it was a network card, used to connect to my ADSL router. It worked perfectly, XP did not show any problems. I had skimped and used an old one thinking "heck, its just a 10/100 card". Taking it out stopped the rebooting problem. Downloading a newer driver (For Windows 2000 which often works on XP, XP was not available) did not solve it. A new NIC fixed the problem.

I lost a few hairs too.. It was nearly comp!

John

Fixed It !!!!!

After escaping too with what little hair I have left intact too

What was it ?

Who knows LOL

I went into the bios (again) and changed anything I could see that was to do with power management and the likes and changed it to something different (including the power button changed TO delay 4 seconds instead of instant off. All in all I changed about 4 things for another value and was gob-smacked when I shut down that it stayed shut down

I tried it about 6 more times and it shuts down each time - so I dont know what it was except it was something in the bios settings.

I am relieved to say the least

Thanks for the help along the way, its been a n experience.


Paul

The bios overrides all other shut down procedures, so it's always the best 1st place to check.

So did you manage to solve the floppy problem??

BangkokButcher wrote:
So did you manage to solve the floppy problem??

Well I did and it only cost me 300 baht on soi 2

No really - i couldn't resist that one it was wide open (oh no here we go again )

Yes i think I did. I have used other floppies and it doesnt chatter but some do when you eject them - the drive chatters like mad until you either restart or click lots of different buttons to give it something else to worry about other than chattering !!!!

Just hope they dont use too many floppy disks !

Paul