A disturbing annoyance on a number of ASUS 440BX P3B-F systems we have. Even though suspend, restart and shutdown always worked on these machines, I did install the Shutdown Supplement and all updates. The only consistent problems they ever had was Explorer hanging on (or over) mapped drives, and a peculiar, recurring boot area error that Scandisk frequently reports about and corrects regarding incorrect disk space. I have installed the latest Mapped Drive patch to see if it resolves that issue, but doubt it, these never have and don’t have any shutdown problems.
Lately we replaced all the old keyboards with new ones featuring the Power/Sleep/Wake keys and all hell broke loose.
Now, if the user or any program attempts to restart Windows, or even restart in MS-DOS Mode, all you get is the “Windows is shutting down” screen and an indefinite hang. Pressing the Reset switch will always reboot after a new POST, to the desired mode normally with no errors detected or generated. MS-DOScan reboot on the “exit” command.
C:\WINDOWS\RUNDLL32 SHELL32.DLL,SHExitWindowsEx 6
or
C:\WINDOWS\RUNDLL32 SHELL32.DLL,SHExitWindowsEx 2
perform the same as the start-restart
Shutdown, Sleep and Wake still perform normally!
If you attempt keyboard intervention during the “is shutting down hang”, the systems report a fatal Windows exception OD at 07D8: 00000218, whereafter ctrl-alt-del does nothing and any other key restores a blank screen with an inanimate mouse pointer.
It’s as if Windows has lost control of the soft reset. Any ideas?