h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I ask because it occurred to me whilst waiting a dogs age for my XP machine to power down one day, that any PC i've used, both XP and pre-XP, has not appeared to suffer any adverse reactions if it has been switched off without going through its shut-down sequence.

Sure the preXP machines would give you that Scandisc nonsense next time you powered it up, and i understand about parking the heads (this should take a second at most), but what exactly is being saved, when XP says 'saving your settings' and why does everything appear to be saved correctly even if the plug was pulled out last time?

Isn't everything you do on a PC saved when you hit 'save' or 'apply'?

I think its saving date to the BIOS, for system changes etc... The reason it doesn't necessarily do any harm is taht most bios's have protection bits built in to em, I think The parking the heads on the hardrives I don't think is such an important issue as it used to be, But mainly, when the PC is 'booting down', what its doing is photoshopping photos you've put on the harddrive so it can share them with all its computer-friends and have a laugh at them

Uhuh I suspected as much. We're onto these pesky PC's now. And they would've gotten away with it if it wasn't for those pesky kids..

Re. the parking heads thing, I always wondered why this couldn't happen automatically even if the plug was pulled out. I mean it wouldn't take an awful lot of the residual current left in PC's to whizz the heads back to home as soon as power was cut...

Traveller in Time on his head
"The main task is to save files that have changed during the session. Other things is doing some house keeping, storing the last changed settings, shutting down programs, shutting down services, resetting IO devices to a known state.

It is something like leaving a house, you can leave it in a mess, but you can also try to take out the garbage and close doors behind you.

There are no changes written to the CMOS (BIOS memory). "

Ok, so what would be the main effect of never shutting it down properly? What would I notice?

Traveller in Time confused
"One day you try to start your computer and it does not.

File system corruption and unfinished writes will hit vital parts of the operating system. Even the original CD does give no avail, replacing the disk may work.

Often you can not find the document syou have been working on, or they have changed to a previous state. Bookmarks get lost as are emails as are email addresses.

Simply put: follow the shutdown procedure, your system is not made to crash down after every session. Or downgrade to a ROM filesystem, where you start all over every day and can leave no marks of any kind. "

I'm only talking hypothetically Traveller, calm down I shut down properly when given the chance, which is 99.9% of the time on my own machine

But if you recall Windows '98 was notorious for crashing on shutdown. I used to pass this ground-level office on my way to work that you could see in through big windows. Almost every single monitor had "Windows '98 is shutting down" displayed all night

We still have one '98 machine at work, and it crashes every day. It has to be shut down with the button more often than not, as it offers no other alternative. Not even ctr-alt-dlt.

Traveller in Time on top
"I know about w98 having problems, (just a model: ) it first shuts down a communication link and then goes waiting for a confirmation from the other side.

The most annoying in that case is musof insulting you of not shutting down properly when the system did spontaneous. "

Winnoch, there are people out there who agree with you. Google for "crash-only software".

I read waaay too much from these links

So i'm still not clear about what (if anything) would happen if i constantly shut down my XP machine by pulling out the plug (The on/off button on my machine powers down normally, so it would have to be the plug)

I'm not such a busy person that i can't spare the 30 or 40 seconds it takes, it's just idle curiosity really. Are most of the programs, processes and applications on modern PC's designed to not corrupt if shut down suddenly? If so, what is all the HDD activity when shutting down normally?

It depends on what the machine is doing at the time you pulled the plug.

Best case scenario is nothing happens and next time you start it all runs tickityboo. The other end of the scale is the machine will not start next time, you get continuous blue screens of death that you cannot repair your way out of and end up having to burn down the whole windows install and rebuilding it.

There is a large spectrum inbetween, where you end up with working XP, but certain documents are gone, or corrupted. Or maybe a particular program will not work. Or, as has happened. XP appears to be working but the MS Installer is gubbed, and you have to do estoric and potentially dangerous things to get it working.

Really, if at all possible go through the shutdown process. On another note you should be able to shut the beast down from the on/off button - just hold it in for a few seconds and that will kill it Hope this helps and until later....
BCNU - Crescent

Thanks. As i said, i always do shut down normally when given the choice. Just wondered how necessary it was. Will carry on with the correct procedure then

The delay is because windows sends out an "I am shutting down message" to the running programs (including all the servcies like virus scanners and the like) and then waits for them to either reply "go ahead, doesn't bother me" or to time out.

You can reduce the timeout period by editing some registry setting somewhere, but it may be that some programs are genuinely doing something in that time so your best bet is to just allow it to close in its own good time.

Are we talking about pulling the plug with all programmes still running or after closing all windows, ending all programmes and THEN switching off the computer?

Traveller in Time on top
"The user applications, the windows, are just a tiny part of the programs running on your computer.

It does not make a big difference in the end result as stated before: most times nothing goes (visible) wrong, sometimes the damage can be repaired, eventually some damage will require a complete reinstall of all your software. "