I have a very strange problem that most likely is Vista related: My computer is shutting down (or re-boot), but at the end it is not switching off the computer (or during re-boot it’ll just go into some kind of sleep mode and won’t accept anything anymore except switching it off the hard way - - - power button 5 sec’s). After starting it again all is working just fine.

This is my machine:

Alienware m7700 Laptop -
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+
Dual Core 2.2GHz, 2x 512K Cache WUXGA Widescreen 17.1" LCD Display
1920 x 1200 Maximum Resolution.
UltraBrite Glossy Screen
PCIx nVidia 7800 GTX 256MB Video Card
RAM 2GB DDR, Dual Channel
Two DVD-RW DL Drives
Two 100GB Hard Drives
200GB RAID 0 volume
802.11g Internal Wireless Card
Gigabit 10/100/1000 Network Card
56K Modem
4x USB 2.0 ports, 2x Mini IEEE1394a ports
Built-in 10-in-1 Card Reader
Built in 1.3MPx camera
Windows Vista Home Premium installed

I have already setup the options to shutdown via the “change plan settings� under “Power Buttons and lid�, but it did not change anything! I know for sure that this is not a hardware issue, because in the past it actually did reboot and shut down fine - - - not always, rather randomly, but now it won’t do it anymore. I also have all current updates installed and never have tempered with the BIOS for example.

I’m already considering changing to XP, but am hesitating due to my pretty complex hardware setup (RAID 0 and dual DVD drives). I don’t want to run into any other setup or driver issues. Also I seem to like Vista and would like to conserve it, but if this problem persists I might reconsider.

Please let me know if there is anything else I can try, switching off the computer like this seems wrong and I’m afraid that one day something else gets broken. So far it has worked and I never have gotten an error message such as “Windows did not close correctly last time� or similar.

Many thanks in advance for any feed back you might have.

Thanks for the advice.

I followed the link and tried to do what they recommend (Go to Start > Run and type services.msc. Locate the nVidia Driver Helper item and right click it. Select Properties. Set the startup value of the service to “Manual� or “Disabled�.)
I don't have this nVidia Driver Helper item, even though I have an nVidia card. I don't know anymore where else to look for it. It's really annoying.

Any other advices available?
Thanks,

The latest signed WHQL driver for the 7800 is this: http://www.nvidia.com/object/w.....63.75.html

I have a 7900 and tested that one and a beta 169.12, also from nVidia: http://www.majorgeeks.com/Nvid.....d5504.html

I found the latter worked better.

No worries, the 2nd one is the driver I currently use. You can always rollback to a previous driver if a new one doesn't work to your liking.

Here's what to do: run the first one from nVidia. Go to Device Manager and click on Display Adapter. You should see your 7800 listed. Right click and choose Update Driver Software. Then Browse My Computer> Let Me Pick From a List>Have Disk>Browse>and click on the .inf file where you have downloaded. If you've been successful, you'll see the screeen flash a bit and when it's finished installing, you should have the new drivers loaded.

Check your Event Viewer> Windows Logs, for anything that may occur before shutdown.

Start> Search> Event Viewer

Could it be that my BIOS is outdated?

Phoenix 4.06CJ15, 1/9/2006

SMBIOS Version 2.34

Just checking...

Some further suggestions here,
http://forums.techarena.in/showthread.php?t=691870

http://digitalliving.cnet.co.u.....4-1,00.htm