[louuu]

hi ron. before i answer your reply let me give you this new piece of info that might help you. i noticed that this problem only occurs after the computer has been on for awhile. it seems that when the computer is cold and hasnt been on for a few hours, the problem doesnt happen when i turn on the computer and shut down. it only starts happening about a half an hour after the computer has been on and has warmed up. for example, after the tech replaced the motherboard, which took him about 1.5 hours, the machine worked fine when i tested it. but after the machine being on all day, when i shut it down at night the problem came back. so now this morning when i turned on the computer after it had been off all night, the power problem was gone and the machine shut down properly. i tried it this morning 4x and all 4x it shut down properly. so i left the computer on and used it for half an hour. after half an hour i tried to shut down and the problem is back. i tried shutting down 3x more and all 3x failed. so it seems to me that the problem may be related somehow to the computer being on or awhile and warmed up before the problem starts. i just wanted to give you this info to see if it helps you in any way. to retest this theory, after i send this message to you, im going go shut off the computer for 1 hour and then turn it back on and try to shut down. if this theory is oorrect, then i should be able to shut down normally. i will report back to you after i try this.

now to answer your message:

> Very strange. If you ask for a new PC what are you going to do about the hard drive?

for last 10 years ive used a program called casper to clone my hard drives. never once has there been any problem. when i cloned my hard drive this time i used acronis for this first time ever because it was already loaded in my computer and i had not installed casper yet. so if i get a new pc, i will install everything over from scratch and then use casper to clone the hard drive to a larger size drive.


> [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon]
PowerdownAfterShutdown

i changed the value data from 0 to 1 and rebooted and then tried to shutdown. the problem still happened, so i changed the value back to 0 again.

> reg export HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon %userprofile%\Desktop\winlogon.txt

when i tried to use the above line in my cmd prompt, an error came up saying "ERROR: Invalid syntax. type "REG EXPORT /? for usage." ive attached a jpg of the error as well so you can see it. maybe you can tell me how to fix this error so i can run this for you.

> HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Power
I'm afraid this is where Win 7 really decides what to do. I exported the key and it's about 700 KB. Very tedious to go through.

ron, i dont mind doing the tedious work if theres a chance it can work. i understand nothing is guaranteed. im assuming i would go line by line and check yours against mine. you said you exported it, but i didnt see it as an attachment in your reply?

so for now im going to send you this message and then turn off my machine for an hour and then restart to test my theory about this problem not happening on a cold machine and ill post back here with my results, thank you.

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It should have had quotes around the key because of the space between window and nt:

reg export "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon" %userprofile%\Desktop\winlogon.txt

However, I think the thermal issue points us back at hardware since I know Windows doesn't care about the temp so I think I would put the original power supply back just to rule it out. It could be something as stupid as the switch on the front tho how you would test it I'm not sure. On an old Dell I worked on once the switch assembly had a single connector to the mobo and I could use the switch to start it then unplug the connector and it would keep running so that might be an option.

[RKinner]

It should have had quotes around the key because of the space between window and nt:

reg export "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon" %userprofile%\Desktop\winlogon.txt

However, I think the thermal issue points us back at hardware since I know Windows doesn't care about the temp so I think I would put the original power supply back just to rule it out. It could be something as stupid as the switch on the front tho how you would test it I'm not sure. On an old Dell I worked on once the switch assembly had a single connector to the mobo and I could use the switch to start it then unplug the connector and it would keep running so that might be an option.

[louuu]

heres the winlogon text file you requested. im going to shut the computer down now and reinstall the original power supply. then ill leave the computer on for half an hour and test the shut down option. ill post my results back here. while im installing the power supply ill try to check and see if theres a cable from the power switch to the motherboard. thanks ron.

Attached Files

•  winlogon.txt   27.07KB   176 downloads

[louuu]

hi ron. so i went ahead and put the original dell power supply back in. since this took me about an hour, the computer is cold and not warmed up. i tried shutting it down a few times, and each time everything worked perfectly and the computer shut off and stayed off. now the test will be for me to leave my computer on for half an hour or more and then test the shut down problem again. this morning my upgraded seasonic power supply worked too when i first turned it on and tested it a few times, but half an hour after the computer was on and warmed up it didnt work again. thats why i said earlier that is seems almost as if this problem starts occurring after the computer is on for awhile and warmed up. but that is kind of strange because its a computer, not a car! anyway ill post back here in about 45 min when i try to shut down again. thanks ron.

[louuu]

so it looks like it was indeed the power supply. the machine has been running for almost 4 hours and i keep testing it by shutting it down every half an hour or so and its worked perfectly everytime. before i couldnt get past half an hour before the problem returned. so im sending the seasonic psu back and ordering a corsair one. ive always used corsair in my last few computers and ive never had an issue with them, although i believe seasonic makes corsairs power supplies. its possible the seasonic was faulty or just wasnt compatible with something in my dell machine. i will leave the computer on overnight and test it again in the morning, but i think we've solved this one. ill post one final update tomorrow morning letting you know how it went. thanks again ron for all your good help, i couldnt of done it without you!

[louuu]

hi again ron. the final update is all positive! basically ive run the machine 24 hours and no problems at all shutting down. so it definitely was a faulty or incompatible power supply that caused my shutdown issue. this shutdown problem is now resolved. thanks again for your kind help ron, its sincerely appreciated.

ps - just one quick question: a few days ago there was a few times when i booted up and i got an error pop up saying something like "tray application has encountered a problem". i closed it out and everything seemed to work fine with no issues. it hasnt come up the last 2 days, but im curious if you know what that means and if theres something i can do to check it? im sure it was nothing serious but ive never seen that before nor do i know what it means. thanks ron.

Edited by louuu, 08 December 2011 - 08:24 AM.

[RKinner]

Not much to go on. Don't even see any tray applications in your logs. Tray applications are the little icons that show up near the clock that Windows 7 likes to hide behind the green box with the down arrow. This is called the System Tray or more often systray. You can look in the event viewer:

Right click on (My) Computer and select Manage (Continue) Then the Event Viewer. Next select Windows Logs. Click on Application I suppose then look back in time to about when it happened and see if you can find a log for it. If not in Application then perhaps System. Hopefully the logs go back that far. All of the shutting down is going to make them very large so they might have overwritten the logs from that long ago. If you find a reference to it then copy and paste the text from the one event.

Probably not important tho if if doesn't happen every time. Possibly a race condition (something wasn't ready when it should have been or something was ready too early) or a transient error.

If it comes back be sure and write down the full error or at least copy the event from the event viewer.

[louuu]

thanks ron, if it comes back ill do what you said about writing it down from the logs. i think it was my norton ghost icon not popping up correctly when i log in and it asks if i wanted to run missed backups when prior backups were missed. it hasnt come back, so for now i wont worry about it. thanks again ron and have a nice evening.

[louuu]

hi ron. i just wanted to give you an update and i have one question for you.

the computer is running great with no problems. i did upgrade the power supply using a corsair one and its working great also. so no computer issues at all whatsoever and thats a good thing

my only question is that i noticed that once every few days on my c drive a random empty file called dbs.txt gets put there. when i click it, its empty with nothing inside. so i delete it and then notice it comes back in a few days in the same place. any ideas what this is or how i can stop it from keep coming back? thanks again ron.

Lou

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[RKinner]

My guess is that it has something to do with Microsoft SQL. If it is an empty file then I wouldn't worry about it.

[louuu]

hi ron. i did read online that it probably had something to do with microsoft sql, which is some sort of server software. i really dont know what it is or does or why its creating that file on my c drive every few days. i did see it was installed in my programs and features section when i first started using this new computer back in early nov. can i delete this or is it necessary to have? or if i cant delete it, can i shut it off so it doesnt reproduce that dbs.txt on my c drive every few days? thanks ron.

[RKinner]

I expect it was installed by some other program that is using it as a database. IF you kill it off you will probably find that something else doesn't work.

[louuu]

i received this machine from dell on 11/17. if you look at my programs and features jpg that i attached, i sorted the installed programs by date. you can see this sql came installed from dell as it was installed 11/3 and i didnt receive the computer til 11/17. im guessing it was just installed by them with a bunch of other stuff that ive already removed. i do use norton ghost which takes a complete image of my current hard drive. i can take an image now and then delete this sql thing. if something goes wrong or doesnt work later i can use ghost to put my drive back to how it was before i deleted it. do you think this is safe for me to do? im just feeling like i really dont need this but ill respect what you think is best. ill wait for your reply, thanks ron.

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[RKinner]

Go ahead and uninstall it then. I'm sure we could find another copy to download anyway. It's a pretty old version of the program.

[louuu]

thanks ron for your reply. i went ahead and created a new ghost image of my hard drive and then deleted the sql program. if noting goes wrong or stops working in the next few days ill assume it was ok to delete that program. thanks again ron. good night, im off to bed as its almost 2am here in new york.