Win2000 Crashes at Shutdown. Help!

[Owen]

Wayne > Time to call on your legendary troubleshooting skills. I finally installed Win2000. When I shutdown the computer it crashes right before it turns off (ntoskrnl.exe dumps or something like that flashes right before it reboots). If I disable APM, the computer will stop at the "it is safe to shutoff your computer screen" but will not power off. Since it take a couple of minutes to shutdown it would be nice to have it turn off by its self (and be able to turn off the hard drive and monitor when idle.)

I imagine it is a problem with APM. I have the SP-1 and all updates from the Windows Update page. Does anyone know how to fix this?

Thanks!
Owen

[Elledan]

Well, I've heard some 'horror'-stories about SP-1, so you could try running win2k without this 'improvement'.

You could try to get some advice on Anandtech Forums too...
</just a suggestion>

[Owen]

Well except for it freezing when it goes to sleep and crashing at shutdown (I think all related to APM) Win2K is quite stable.

I always thought Win2K was buggy until you installed the SP-1 patch. Oops.

Owen

[Hierophant]

Its most likely related to the BIOS of your machine. Go to your motherboard manufacturer's site and see if they have an update for APM just to make sure. It sounds more like a BIOS issue than Windows issue, since by the time the "power off signal" is sent Windows isn't running anymore.

[Owen]

That's what I thought to. But how can windows still give the BSOD and then automatically restart? Anyway, I looked at Tyan's website and they said the fix is only to support 36+ gig hard drives... since I don't have one that big, I'm going to not upgrade that right now. (I've ruined a BIOS before and don't want to do it again.) I think it has to be corrupt software or something like that. Why else would I get a dump written to the hard drive and a Blue Screen of Death?

Owen

[Edited by Owen on 09-11-2000 at 01:54 PM]

[Hierophant]

OK. I did a little research and here are some articles that may or may not help:
Windows 2000 and APM Support

Troubleshooting APM in Windows 2000

Overview of Power Management in Windows 2000

ACPI BIOS list and Test Matrix

How to troubleshoot STOP error messages after enabling APM


One thing I did notice is that Windows 2000 does not properly support APM if any of your drivers are Windows NT 4.0 drivers. One good thing to do would be to make sure all of your drivers are updated.

[Owen]

wluke > you are awesome.

I'll try these out as soon as I get home. One weird thing though: Hibernate or Sleep is never an option even when APM is enabled and the computer rebooted. The docs here make it seem like it is ALWAYS an option. Humm... bad karma?

Owen

[Hierophant]

There is an article about that. Go to http://support.microsoft.com/. Once there choose Windows 2000 as the product and type "APM" in step 3 and click "GO".

You should get 33 different articles including the ones above.

I hope this helps.


<<<Ponders why people say that Microsoft's site is difficult to use>>>

[Karl]

Do you have a network card in your machine? If so then install Win2K without the network card in it, then after Win2K has fully installed you can put the network card back in the machine. This solved the BSOD on Shutdown for several of the machines I tried Win2K on.

[Owen]

Okay. Bad luck is coming my way. I followed MS's advice and uninstalled my sound card drives; the only NT drivers I had. I reboot and the computer crashes right after I type in my password. No matter what: safe mode, last good config, anything. It all crashes. I have no way of seeing the NT partition since all I have is Win 9x stuff and it can't see the NTFS. I finally reinstall 2K. Worse news: it still won't shutdown. I have a totally clean install with ONLY my graphic drivers. But now it won't shutdown no matter what. APM or no APM.

Microsofts help is pretty useless on "shutdown". On one page they give an example question: "windows hangs on shutdown." I say "perfect." I click on it and... NO ARTICLES FOUND!! Argh. Well, I'm sure the info is there somewhere.

Well, I'm going to try every combo of APM on, ACPAI on/off possible and see if one works and memorize all the tech support article from MS...

Owen

[Owen]

Oh. Hibernate is back on my clean install, so it must have been a driver... Except that hibernate crashes when used...

Owen

[Owen]

Okay. I decided I can live without APM (and automatic power off.) APM does almost nothing for desktop machines, and the convenience of having a stable Win2k outweighs the annoyance of having to push the power button.

Thanks everyone!

Owen

[Owen]

The plot thickens...

Windows crashes when ANY power managment action takes place. Just now the computer was idle for 1/2 hour and the screen blanked. Boom. The computer froze.

Why me?

Owen

[Elledan]

Hmm... It seems like it's getting serious now... I suggest that you try Anandtech Forums. Those guys have helped me out of a lot of trouble so I'm sure that they'll help you

Good luck!

[CJ]

I've got some kind of problem at shutting down my Win98 too. The last time it almost always happens. I need to hit the 'End Task' (or whatever it is called in english) thing that pops up when it is shutting down. Not really a big problem but it still is a minor inconvience. Anyway my system NEVER crashes (anymore) even when I'm on 7% of my sys resources. (Darn, I had to make a screenshot of that)

So any suggestions? I didn't really install something new that would have caused that.

Christophe

[James]

freesources: do you have Win98 SE? If so, then on the MS site there is a shutdown patch for it...goto the download page and choose Win98 as the Product, then key in Shutdown in the search box.

I have Win2k with APM enabled, I have no problems at all. Hibernate works great, etc. Maybe you should try contacting Microsoft support (if your copy of Win2k is legitimate )

[CJ]

Nope I don't have Win98 SE and I'm proud of it


Christophe

[Hierophant]

The patch will work for Windows 98. It is actually part of the Service Pack 1 which is a small portion of Windows 98 SE.

[Owen]

Well I posted at anand so I'll see if anything good comes out of that...

Owen

[Hierophant]

Sorry I couldn't have been more help but my Windows 2K experience is null because they only have the beta copy at work still because it hasn't been approved for use by the Hardware Architecture department. I simply will not install beta qualify software on any of the machines I have to work with.

[Owen]

That's okay. As far as I know, there is nothing I can do about it except manually turn off my computer and not have the monitor blank. I have notice that quite a few people @ anand have a similar problem and they all have VIA BIOSes so I think a solution may come out someday in the not-so-close future...

Owen

[Hierophant]

What kind of processor do you have? Intel or AMD? I am just curious if the people having these problems are using Athlons and the absence of MMX and certain power saving features in Intel chips is what is causing the problem.

[Owen]

I have an AMD K6-3 400. A lot of people on Anand had AMD, but no so many that it was an obvious AMD thing. Of course, they all overclock their 400 MHz CPUs to 1,000 MHz, so it's kinda like, "Duh. Of course your computer is crashing."



Owen

[Elledan]

Originally posted by Owen
I have an AMD K6-3 400. A lot of people on Anand had AMD, but no so many that it was an obvious AMD thing. Of course, they all overclock their 400 MHz CPUs to 1,000 MHz, so it's kinda like, "Duh. Of course your computer is crashing."



Owen

LOL

And they're using water-cooling, I may hope?

[CJ]

Originally posted by wluke
The patch will work for Windows 98. It is actually part of the Service Pack 1 which is a small portion of Windows 98 SE.

The problem wasn't there before. It seems to have vanished cause I could shut off my system 'normal' 3 times in a row

Christophe