The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    Shutdown/power-off fiasco in progress

    Discussion in 'Dell' started by nytnyt, Aug 28, 2007.

  1. nytnyt

    nytnyt Newbie

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    2
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    Hello,

    Long background for the question, not sure best places to post it apart from here and an Ubuntu forum, so starting with those two.

    Recently bought a refurbished Dell Latitude D610. Installed Ubuntu onto it from a CD, no problem. (Never used Ubuntu before, only other Linux experience is some Knoppix.) Today tried using it with the docking station for the first time. Things went well until I sat the external keyboard aside. Must have grazed some function key I guess; the user interface began making lots of application program icons, maybe all of them trying to capture a screen dump,looked like the count was rising steadily and was already above 200 and the disk was cranking mightily...

    At this point the keyboard no longer understood the Shift key nor the Caps Lock key, and the mouse was becoming hard to control. I did manage to get to a command line, where I tried the /etc/shutdown command (luckily Ubuntu had one similar to Solaris, with which I am familiar). The command began work, and got half a dozen progress messages before it burped and displayed a command prompt.

    At this point, neither the keyboard nor mouse would respond at all.

    Could not get the thing to power itself off via either the power button, or,
    pulling the charger cord out: it merely switched to battery.

    It is quiet enough now that I believe _possibly_ only the fan is running, not the disk drive. At some point maybe 5 to 10 hours from now, the battery will have drained and the fan will stop running. After that point I would try plugging it into the charger to see if it boots.

    My plea for help: is there any way to do something before the battery has fully drained, to decrease chances of disk drive damage when the power is terminated (assuming for the moment that perhaps the disk drive is actually still running); and is there any way to do something before the battery has fully drained, that will increase the chances the system will boot successfully when power is restored via the charger?

    Thanks,
    nytnyt
     
    nytnyt, Aug 28, 2007
    #1