Strange shutdown/reboot issue?

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30 Jun 2005
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113
Hello,
My PC has developed a problem and for the life of me i cannot figure out what is wrong.

The symptoms are after a clean install of XP i find when i go to shutdown or restart, the computer goes through the motions but never actually does the final bit to power off or restart.

I am posting here because i believe it is a hardware issue as even during the install of XP the installer is not able to reboot its self.

But to add confusion to the mix my dual booted copy of Vista will reboot the computer and restart the computer fine?!?

The problem is i have moved a few cables and fans and removed a sound card from my setup as well as reinstalling XP so it is really hard to conclusivly decide what is at fault.

Any ideas?
 
I seem to remember having a similar fault...all I did was re-install XP again and that fixed it. Have no idea if its the same thing but thats what I did
 
It can't be a hardware fault because if the PS-ON pin (the one that controls on/off) wasn't connected then the PC would never turn on, plus it works in Vista as you say.
Seems like a re-install is a sensible idea, kinda sucks that you'll have to do Vista as well.
 
It does it to me on my Vista machine, but didn't do it before I re-installed.

It shuts down Windows, the usual stuff happens, then my display driver is unloaded and my screen goes off. A few seconds later, one of two things happen:

1) The machine sits there doing nothing until I do a hard shutdown (hold down the button) or reset the machine.
2) The hard drive light goes full on for about 10 minutes, then the machine reboots itself. I doubt this is a BSOD, as my memory dumps only take 20 seconds or so when I've had BSODs before.
 
Check in device manager whilst you are in win xp that when you click on the plus symbol next to computer, whether or not it says ACPI or Advanced Configuration & Power Interface.

I remember from ages ago, there where acpi or apm issues which where either caused by BIOS having a old date or having acpi or apm disabled in the BIOS. With new boards there should be no issue unless it is turned off.

In the case where they where not disabled and windows was just refusing to recognise it as being acpi compliant you could just get around it by pressing F5 during the text setup of windows, i.e around the same time it asks you to press F6 to load drivers.

You are then given the option to load which HAL you want to use and you can just force ACPI compliant spec.

Not sure if any of this will help you or not!
 
Thanks for the help so far.

I am now starting to agree that it is an ACPI issue, so i have tried flashing my BIOS and also forcing windows XP install (using the F5 method) to install the ACPI Multiprocessor HAL.

This has still not fixed the problem as the windows XP installer still cannot restart the computer during install so i assume it will not be able to once fully installed.

For some reason it seams XP will not recognise i have an ACPI motherboard, but it did originally when i installed XP a few years ago! MAkes no sense.
 
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