Unexpected shutdown

Today I had to use the power button to shut Vista down after what seemed like several minutes of waiting for the OS shutdown procedure to complete.
I did not perform any updates so I know this was not the cause.

When I powered back up, the system gave this message in DOS-like text prior to the OS even starting to load.

Unexpected shutdown detected. Initilizing...[xx]%

[xx] represents the percentage from 0 through 99 before the OS was
allows to start. Vista loaded normal.


Ideas?

Also, it seems the BIOS does not permit booting from the eSata drive?

I do not see an option in the boot from list, is there a trick for this?

I want to use an eSata drive to load XP

 

It could be because of some program/service running that may have refused to be saved/terminated during shut-down. Check Windows Logs.

Well, if your motherboard has a native eSATA slot, there should be an option to include it in the boot order. But loading XP might not be possible, since XP does not have the drivers initialised, required for SATA until it is booted.

 

I created an XP install with SP3 & the Intel drivers so it should be ok.
I was able to get the BIOS to see the external HDD after using the USB port of another computer for power, I didn't realize the USB didn't have power
on post.

That message has been there since day one when I had nothing installed, just the OS. When I first got it and installed the OS, the first official release of the ITM drivers would cause a crash and that shutdown message would come when I would reboot. I hadn't seen it since then but it reminded me to find out what it is.

In the course of writing this, XP installed the DOS part and is now in the GUI part.