Frozen on "shutting down" screen Relle 12/30/2008 9:48:42 PM I left the computer on last night and today found it frozen on a blue screen with the message "Windows is shutting down." Holding down the power button doesn't do anything. Neither does the ctrl-alt-esc Force-Quit command I'm used to using with frozen Macs. Can I "force" the machine to finish shutting down, or force it to restart? I've used a PC at work before, but this is my first PC/Windows machine at home, so I don't know anything about troubleshooting. It's a second-hand IBM ThinkPad running some kind of Windows XP.

RE: Frozen on "shutting down" screen Relle 12/30/2008 9:56:57 PM Also: It has been frozen on this screen for at least an hour since I have been home, and probably longer than that. Note also that I never told it to shut down; it seems to have done that independently. Thanks for any suggestions or insight.

RE: Frozen on "shutting down" screen Relle 12/30/2008 10:48:07 PM Shortly after I posted this, I tried holding down the power button for perhaps 30 seconds, and it shut down. I restarted, and the system seemed to work fine. Nonetheless, I would be grateful for any tips on force-quit or force-restart commands for the PC, if anyone knows any to share. Thank you.

Re: Frozen on "shutting down" screen "Gerry" <gerry[ at ]nospam.com> 12/30/2008 11:37:20 PM Relle Press the computer Reset button. This is far less likely to damage your system than pressing the Power On / Off button. The Reset button is usually a very small button in contrast to the Power button which is usually much larger. http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/R/reset_button.html However with an IBM Thinkpad the Reset button may not be as easy to find as for a Desktop desribed above. Thinkpad not powering off. After certain kind of crashes (run MS-Windows for a while :-), Thinkpad will not power off even when holding its power button. You have to turn it over, take a pencil, and press well-hidden reset button (blue, I was told about it by IBM technician, I would not find it otherwise). Pretty annoying. (I have now reproducible way to make thinkpad crash like this ;-) Source: http://atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~pavel/thinkpad.html -- Hope this helps. Gerry ~~~~ FCA Stourport, England Enquire, plan and execute ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Relle wrote: [Quoted Text] > Also: It has been frozen on this screen for at least an hour since I > have been home, and probably longer than that. Note also that I never > told it to shut down; it seems to have done that independently. > > Thanks for any suggestions or insight.