Am I doing damage??

I would like to know how much damage can be done to a computer by shutting it down by the button on the tower instead the usual way of turning it off by the start button process. The computer in question is a Dell E310 with XP Media center OS. I bought the computer for my son back in March to run his educational software and games on it. He uses it with his sister every day and sometimes the computer "freezes up" where it will not respond to commands, nor will the mouse work,( there is no cursor visible on the screen.) I have tried to get the computer working again by trying various keys such as the windows key, control/alt/delete, and the esc key to no avail. I end up pushing the button on the tower and it immediately shuts down. I have read in the past that this process should only be used in emergencies when no other means will work to unfreeze or shut the computer down. On average I have been doing this 1 to 2 times a week, and was wondering what damage I am doing to the computer by doing this? Is there any other thing I can try instead of pushing the button on the tower to make the computer respond when it freezes up?
The funny thing is I bought this computer for the kids because everytime they went on my computer, they "froze " it up or changed one or more of my settings. I, myself have only had to shut my computer down by pressing the button on the tower only about 3 times in the last 4 years I have owned it.
Another thing I noticed that I was wondering if somebody could explain is when I push the button on my son's computer tower, it shuts down immediately, whereas on mine ( Dell Dimension 4400, XP) I have to hold the button in on the tower for about 10 seconds before the computer shuts down. Why the difference?:dunno:

well the general standard is for 1 press of the power button to initiate normal shutdown (or whatever else its mapped for such as sleep/stand by) and a prolonged holding of the button to override that and cut the power.


So your system is the more "normally" set up one. Your kids system probably just has an unusual mobo setup that kills everything instantly after touching the power button.

More settings to change the power button sofware mapping is under desktop properties>screen saver> power...


But anyway you should not be doing any physical damage to the system by forcibly shutting it down. The progresive shutdown is more of a sofware protection if you will to prevent corrupted system files and such (eg. often the system memory is used as a HD buffer - a force shutdown will kill all that info before it gets to the HD).

Anyway since your kids have messed up our system too it seems they either mess with system settings the do not comprehend or download spyware/virus ladden sofware. Probably beliving all those flash adds that claim "click here to improve your system speed" or crap like that.

Make sure to install a good firewall and antivir and some good antispyware. Of corse the best fix would be to fech the restore disk and do a clean reinstall.

After you have a clean system, install all the sofware your kids need and have them run in reduced priveleged mode rather than the default admin mode. That will prevent them from messing up the system again.

hmmm, neutrino's covered it already. :D

[QUOTE=Neutrino

Anyway since your kids have messed up our system too it seems they either mess with system settings the do not comprehend or download spyware/virus ladden sofware. Probably beliving all those flash adds that claim "click here to improve your system speed" or crap like that.

Make sure to install a good firewall and antivir and some good antispyware. Of corse the best fix would be to fech the restore disk and do a clean reinstall.

After you have a clean system, install all the sofware your kids need and have them run in reduced priveleged mode rather than the default admin mode. That will prevent them from messing up the system again.[/QUOTE]
Thanks for the advice. Just a quick comment on some of the things you touched upon. I know my son constantly is "messing" with the settings and doesn't realize what he's doing a lot of the time. He is deaf and has Asperger's Syndrome, an Autism Spectrum Disorder, where he is very intelligent for his age (6) He usually corrects the changes he makes, but on more than one occasion I've had to go into the computer to undo them. Once I even used System Restore when I couldn't figure out how to get the display on the screen back to normal as he had turned it 90 degrees and you had to tilt your head to view it :lol:. Thank God they do not have internet access yet as I think there may be a problem with the modem. i ran Modem Helper and it tells me there is a dial tone to the modem but it can't do anything with it. I plan on calling tech support soon (unit is only 2 months old) but dread the long "on hold" times and inept help I have experienced in the past when I had called concerning my computer. When they do have access I definitely plan on installing firewall and antispyware/ antivirus software and limit where they can go. I've been so busy lately I forgot about the administrative priveledges that I can set up to stop them from changing settings and the like. When I set their computer up it didn't ask me anything about it, it just gave administrative priviledges to everybody's account. When I set mine up 4 years ago it immediately asked me which 2 accounts I'd like to designate as administrators. Things sure can change in 4 short years. I don't think I need to do a clean reinstall seeing it is only 2 months old and btw I didn't even get a restore disk with the computer! What's up with that- cost cutting measures? I've gone in and deleted software that was pre-installed in the computer that we didn't need and any games that had a "free trial" that was now expired. I really haven't added much software yet, but plan to in the near future. I do have some simple games for them that I've installed on my computer like Pac Man, Dig Dug Deeper, and other 80's type video games. Thanks once again and I'll make some of those changes today.

If you repeatedly "hard" shutdown (instant power off, as you described) any computer, you will sooner or later kill the hard drive. I would check to see if there is any damage to the drive already. To do this, go into My Computer, right click C:\ Drive and select Properties. Go to the Tools tab and click Check Now. Tick both boxes (auto fix errors, recover bad sectory) and reboot your machine. before Windows boots it should kick off a Check Disk.


In the users tab, change all accounts except your own from Administrator to User, this should limit the damage that can be done.

As for your modem, check the phone line is plugged into the correct socket at the back of the computer, as there are usually a couple of options. After that, open Device Manager to see if there is a yellow exclamation point or a red cross through your Modem. To open Device manager, right click My Computer, select Properties, select the Hardware tab and click Device manager.

OR

You could consider networking your computers so they share the same internet connection?

Hope this helps.

A hard shutdown is very very unlikely to kill a hard drive in a physical sense. Sure it can damage system files as I mentioned in my earlier post but not trash the HD. Modern HDs have very good protection systems that will park the head in milliseconds and initiate a proper spindown. They are so good as to even protect against moderate drops. Furthermore all modern computers adhere to the ATX standard which unlike the old AT does no physically cut the power to the system. To do so you need to either unplug the power cable or flip the PSU switch.


If you would like to keep an eye out for your drives physical health just make sure SMART is enabled in the bios and then use a program that can read its data. Smartfan is one of my favorite SMART readers.

Anyway venture, the default admin setup is Microsoft's fault for not setting up proper user privileges system as in UNIX. They promised this in Vista so we can only hope.

As far as the system not having a restore disk that is quite ridiculous, OEM builders are getting worse and worse. There is a chance they might have placed a hidden partition the HD to restore the system from, except normally that partition is accessed from some sort of an emergency disk in case of total OS failure.

As far as the system not having a restore disk that is quite ridiculous, OEM builders are getting worse and worse. There is a chance they might have placed a hidden partition the HD to restore the system from, except normally that partition is accessed from some sort of an emergency disk in case of total OS failure.

Just curious, if I had to, could I use the restore disk that came with my computer, (Dell Dimension 4400 XP from 2002) on my son's computer, (Dell E310 with Windows XP Media Center Edition 2006)? They are both XP but I'm not sure it would work because my son's is probably more updated and a different version of the same OS.

Just curious, if I had to, could I use the restore disk that came with my computer, (Dell Dimension 4400 XP from 2002) on my son's computer, (Dell E310 with Windows XP Media Center Edition 2006)? They are both XP but I'm not sure it would work because my son's is probably more updated and a different version of the same OS.


well it doesn't matter if an XP version is newer or not, or even if its a different version (except for the features). With updates XP is XP. There are no major updates except for the XP 64 bit wich is based on the 2003 server kernel.


However, it will most likelly not work since that restore disk most likely has drivers set up by the oem to work with your system. Plus if it needs to activate it will not work upon detecting different hardware.

Bes solution is to call the oem and ask for a restore disk, or an the windows licence they sold you.

i usually do the hold down for 4 second to shut down on my comuter, not sure why but it runs faster now.

The BIOS on my current machine can be set to power off immediately from the power button, or delay for a number of seconds

If I'm not mistaken, the XP restore disk provided by Dell, HP, etc. is tied to the mobo BIOS and specific machine configuration. It usually doesn't work on any machine but the one it was originaly dedicated to. Microshaft is kinda picky about that.

I agree with Oz, set up a separate account for each user, and limit the things they can do from each account. You can make your files inaccessible to those users, and you can prevent them from installing any additional programs from their accounts. You can place a number of usage restrictions on each account, independent of yours.

If someone else wants to use my machine, they have to use the guest account, or they can just not use it at all.

PM me for custom configuration stuff - like whitelisted sites (pre approved), limit time on computer per day with countdown etc. if you want it.

Dell creates a hidden restore partition on the very back 10 percent of the hard drive and does not ship out any restore cd's or any media at all except for the aol crap they endorse. To access the restore partition it gives you an option at boot when it displays the Dell screen to go into bios, boot order, or restore partition. As for the system freezing up and everything it's obviously something that they are doing causing it so do a google search for a program for windows called deep freeze which can have a free evaluation downloaded and if you like it can then buy the full version. What deep freeze does is best done with a fresh install so do the system recovery from the hidden partition and wipe everything and start from scratch then by yourself without them doing anything with it get any programs that you want installed or deleted done basically as if you were going to be using the computer all the time and then create the limited account for them to use and then install deep freeze. What it will do is take the exact configuration of the entire computer and lock it down so even if they change every setting on the computer and delete countless files as long as deep freeze is running when the computer is shut down and rebooted everything will be back to normal as if they never even touched it. I've used it at companies I worked at before with tremendous success as it saved countless format and reload's.

P.S. As for the modem if and when you finally get through to dell tech support they will run modem helper on it as well and if it doesn't come back with any failures and fail codes they will say it works fine and blow you off to your ISP or charge you extra for "specialized support". I know this and the inner workings of Dell because I used to work at their call center as a tech support rep.

P.S. As for the modem if and when you finally get through to dell tech support they will run modem helper on it as well and if it doesn't come back with any failures and fail codes they will say it works fine and blow you off to your ISP or charge you extra for "specialized support". I know this and the inner workings of Dell because I used to work at their call center as a tech support rep.

I ran Modem helper again because I forgot the error code it gave me the first time and this is what it told me. "There is a dial tone coming into the modem but the modem can not hear it. Result Code 70 No dial tone at modem." Do you think the modem could be defective right out of the box? It never has been used in the 2 months we have had it. I wanted to wait until the kids were "comfortable" with the computer before I allowed internet access. If I call tech support :banghead: I will give them the code and what else the error message said. Hopefully, they can figure something out without trying to blow me off.

Are you 100% sure the line is plugged into the correct socket on the modem? Have you tested the line with a phone handset to make sure the line gets dial tone?

If you have then you probably have a dead modem.