[dark knight]

I just downloaded this program and it sure lives up to its name. however, there is a warning on the site that reads...."Warning: Superfast Shutdown is extremely powerful! Use at your own risk! Although it has never been reported, regular usage could possibly cause disk corruption"

will using this program on a regular basis kill my hard disk?

the program can be found at : http://www.xp-smoker.com/freeware.html

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I would be worried about a program like that. If it shuts down your computer almost instantly, then that means it is skipping several steps that your computer goes through when it shuts down.

Have you noticed when you shut down, how it says, "Saving your settings"? That step is most likely skipped when using this program. Also when you install something new, and it requires a restart, the program may not realize you restarted if you use that programs because certain steps may be skipped.

I don't think this program will "kill" your hard disk, but it could cause problems.

If you want me to download it and test it out on my computer and see how it works, let me know. But personally, I'd recommend waiting the extra time for your computer to shut down correctly. How long does it normally take for your computer to shut down?

Edited by computerwiz12890, 27 January 2006 - 07:59 AM.

[computerwiz12890]

I would be worried about a program like that. If it shuts down your computer almost instantly, then that means it is skipping several steps that your computer goes through when it shuts down.

Have you noticed when you shut down, how it says, "Saving your settings"? That step is most likely skipped when using this program. Also when you install something new, and it requires a restart, the program may not realize you restarted if you use that programs because certain steps may be skipped.

I don't think this program will "kill" your hard disk, but it could cause problems.

If you want me to download it and test it out on my computer and see how it works, let me know. But personally, I'd recommend waiting the extra time for your computer to shut down correctly. How long does it normally take for your computer to shut down?

Edited by computerwiz12890, 27 January 2006 - 07:59 AM.

[Fenor]

Allowing the computer to shut down quickly means that you are disabling parts of the operating system that write extremely important information back to the hard drive from memory before it shuts down. Doing this can only mean bad things, and since I have never even heard of anyone I know using a program like that, then I would not even think of using one. If your computer takes 'eons' to shut down, then most likely you have some corrupted software on your computer (Like a completely installed version of NIS or McAfee Security Center ) or you have some malware on your computer or your computer is too weak to be running the operating system installed on it.

Fenor

Edited by Fenor, 27 January 2006 - 08:03 AM.

[Johanna]

Ouch...Fenor...slamming Norton again, huh?

For emergencies only, make a kill button:
%windir%\System32\shutdown.exe -s -t 0

Johanna

[Mr.Chow]

From my understanding of the shut down proccess is that it will "lock" hardware and your harddrive. If you skip that then you can cause physical problems with your hardware. I would only test this out on a old computer that i didn't care much about.

[dark knight]

thanks for your input.... my computer doesn't take that long to shut down so I will probably remove this program. It was just interesting to see windows shut down that fast!
thanks!