WinXP: Disable automatic power-off after instruction to shutdown?

I am having some problems with my system that I assume may be caused by too early power-off when shutting down the system (HDD may not have the time required to write all data before power is gone).

Is there a way to disable (for testing) the automatic self power-off when shutdown process is finished?

Background: I often get missing/defect C:\Windows\system32\config\system BSOD and similar. I already upgraded to the latest Intel drivers and checked the HDD. System: MSI H55M-E33 AHCI mode, XP Home SP3

Robert

Posted 2012-03-07T20:07:50.937

Reputation: 4 857

You can do this via msconfig advanced settings, AFAIK. – user1686 – 2012-03-07T20:42:53.673

@grawity I looked under my own msconfig options (in Windows 7) and didn't see anything that looked like such a setting. Did you verify this in XP? – Ben Richards – 2012-03-07T23:22:33.110

Answers

In the BIOS setup utility for your mainboard, go into the Power Management Setup screen and disable ACPI Function. This should cause the machine to require physical interaction to shut down the computer after you click "shut down" in the OS.

Ben Richards

Posted 2012-03-07T20:07:50.937

Reputation: 11 662

1Disabling ACPI might have negative effects on the overall performance, though. – user1686 – 2012-03-07T21:02:19.123

@grawity Good things to note. I would only recommend this step for debugging, and not as a solution to the overarching issue of corrupted hard drive data. – Ben Richards – 2012-03-07T21:09:24.403