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Shutdown in Win2000

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10 replies

by cm0229

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I installed Win2000 Professional on a AT PC. I cannot get to shutdown normally. A flashing cursor is all I get.

Please Help

Thanks in Advance
cmj

10 replies

by cg it

First and foremost is, your using an AT power supply and not an ATX power supply. AT power supplies do not support soft power off. They only support complete power off shut down. Also, you can not take out the AT power supply from the computer and try to install an ATX power supply instead [unless the motherboard supports both power sockets].

by cg it

This is a little more info on AT power supplies. AT power supplies will work with DOS, Windows 3.1, Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows ME where when you shut down the computer, you'll get a message that states " It is now safe to turn off your computer" . Then you can flip the power switch and turn off power completely to the PC without screwing up Windows. ATX power supplies on the other hand support soft power off. This means that even though it appears that the computer is off, there still is power to the motherboard via the power supply. This was developed for "waking up" computers to perform maintenance tasks or to send faxes or emails at a time no one would be using the computer or to "wake them" up remotely,such as on a network. (Undoubtly there have been questions on this forum by people as to why their computers suddenly turn themselves on in the middle of the night). The plug(s)[two in the case of AT power supplies)used to connect the power supply to the motherboard are different for AT and ATX. Therefore you can't just change out power supplies.

by cg it

AT PC's in this day and age are "Boat Anchors". There isn't much you can do with them due to physcial limitation of hardware design in the motherboards,(PGA sockets 3,4,7,super 7) memory,(what? 72 pin dimms? 30 pin simms? compared to 168 pin Sdram's), Hard Drive controllers (DMA 33 or less) and 8 to 16 bit ISA expansion slots to the current 32 bit PCI slots. There isn't any value to a AT PC's nowadays.

by dont-bother

There are plenty of AT Class Pentiums out there that work just fine. Please keep telling people they are boat anchors -- picking them up for a very small fraction of their original cost and reselling or donating them to people 'who need pcs, disabled handicapped, etc' make those people 'real happy'!

I've experienced the problem you describe several times, and its always been related to either the video card I was using or some other IRQ conflict.

First I'd verify that I don't have any obvious IRQ conflicts, then I'd try using a 'more up to date' video card, like an ATI, GForce MX, or something similar.

Hang in there -- it WILL work!

by dont-bother

AT Power Supplies don't support soft powerdown, you're correct, but...
They don't need to -- you can set this action in the bios settings, even on newer PCs.

AT vs ATX power supplies have 'nothing to do' with the problem he's describing.

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