[CelestialTeardrop]

I use an APC surge protector and the accompanying APC PowerChute software. For some reason, during a two minute power outage today my computer just turned off, even though the battery could have sustained it for at least 15 minutes and I got no notification that the system was on battery power.

So I was wondering what damage might have been done to the machine when it turned off from the outage? (there wasn't any immediately visible data loss since I only had one web page open at the time)

Thanks in advance.

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There is always a chance something could happen, no gurantees. But if you were able to start it back up later on when the power came back and there have been no problems, then I would say its ok.

The reason is probably something in the APC software told it to shut down. Check the settings.

[jaxisland]

There is always a chance something could happen, no gurantees. But if you were able to start it back up later on when the power came back and there have been no problems, then I would say its ok.

The reason is probably something in the APC software told it to shut down. Check the settings.

[pip22]

It is most unlikely any damage will have been caused to the PC itself when the power is suddenly lost. What usually happens is some system files may get corrupted, preventing Windows from starting -- though even this is quite rare unless you are using the very old Windows 3.1

If Windows starts okay then there is nothing to worry about, but it would be wise to run a disk check using the built-in 'Scandisk' utility from the DOS prompt, using the command SCANDISK C: /AUTOFIX just to check for (and fix) any errors.

It's possible thet Scandisk has already run itself after Windows was improperly shut-down with the power outage, in which case you need do nothing.

[CelestialTeardrop]

Thanks for your replies jaxisland and pip22.

I'll run scandisk, since I didn't see it running during startup earlier.

I'm hoping it was the APC software that shut the system down, but I think that's unlikely because before it would give a warning first that it was on battery power and (as the battery emptied) it would announce shut down in two minutes unless the user shut it down.

Thanks again!

Edited by CelestialTeardrop, 18 May 2007 - 01:07 PM.