PCs (well, this one in particular) now take so long to even think about shutting down that I've turned the monitor off and departed before its completed.
Interestingly, it don't need someone to push the 'on' button, it can just turn itself off.
It is annoying, however, that sometimes I'll come back next day or week, and found it has only got so far before deciding to ask whether work should be saved, or crashed or something.

I propose a new feature - the 'Damn Well' Shutdown option.
If this feature is active, then a user-specifiable delay (default: 20 minutes) after shutdown is invoked, the computer damn well shuts down.
Firstly, any living applications are informed, and get the chance to save files. If they don't know where to do so, they could go in a particular directory where the user will be informed on startup - and asked whether the application should re-start. Any which ignore this request are just killed off.
Then the computer tidies itself up as much as possible, and switches itself off.
-- Loris, Nov 22 2002

Would this be an almost uniquely Windows feature, or is this just my experience of the world?
-- st3f, Nov 22 2002


But what happens if the 'Damn Well Shutdown' feature has a bug and fails to invoke or complete the shutdown. We'd have to have a 'Bloody Well Shutdown or Else' feature. This in turn might not work and we'd have to escalate to the 'I Warned You; You've Got 10 Seconds To Shut Down' feature. And so on...
-- DenholmRicshaw, Nov 22 2002


. . . or maybe "clear virtual memory pagefile" is enabled?

Is the machine part of a network with group policies in effect?
-- bristolz, Nov 22 2002


My computer (well, the university-lab one I use) doesn't actually take 20 minutes to shutdown, maybe a couple of minutes or so. But that is just too long for me to hang around and check that it'll switch itself off (since it'll switch itself off anyway), so I turn the monitor off and leave.

The problem comes when there are applications (often doing nothing), but which pop up a 'do you really want to quit?' confirmation box. This is then displayed overnight/weekend/holiday because the computer doesn't ever figure out that it probably should turn itself off. So the 20 minute delay was in case there was some unsaved data or something.
I proposed this besides the auto-saving function so that people do actually try to save everything and not rely on the feature to re-load their stuff on start-up (which would confuse novices about saving things even more, and be an increased corruption risk).

I like the other suggestions, but just pulling the plug makes it display a sarky message on startup about being shutdown incorrectly - particularly annoying when it crashed while trying to shutdown. So this idea was intended to address this too, by making try to sort itself out after hanging also.
-- Loris, Nov 25 2002


Seems like a lot of ideas posted are just proposed hacks around annoying Windows problems. When I tell a Unix machine to shutdown, it usually takes about the same amount of time every time, and always finishes. It also tells me exactly what it is doing the whole time, which Windows fails to do ever.
-- bmadigan, Aug 25 2004


But there's so little reason to turn a Unix machine on to begin with ;-)
-- bristolz, Aug 25 2004


//Seems like a lot of ideas posted are just proposed hacks around annoying Windows problems//

Makes sense, since necessity IS the mother of invention.
-- shapu, Aug 26 2004


The most annoying is when a total system crash causes the soft power switch to stop working, so you have to fish around the back & pull the plug....
On a lap top, even worse, the battery must be removed or you have to find a little paper clip.
-- Ling, Aug 26 2004


[Ling] You don't need to pull the battery out of your laptop. Hold the power button in the off position and count to 5. Most (if not all laptops I have used will power off after 5 seconds of holding the power button.

My laptop is set to power off when I close the lid. No buttons to push. Only one thing that will hang it up is if my GPS is plugged in. Other than that, it powers off easily without wiping its butt.
-- Klaatu, Aug 26 2004


Thanks. I'll try to remember that next time.
-- Ling, Aug 26 2004


hilarious
-- schmendrick, Oct 03 2005



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