Hang on XP Restart

Managed to get XP hung-up during an attempted Restart. Wouldn't get past the Windows "Saving your settings... shuting down..." screen

Being a noob with laptops, I was looking for my 'reset' button [Is there one....???]

Tried Dell Chat and that was a waste [this time around]

Keyboard seemed useless. The Power On/Off wouldn't function.

Asked during another chat session if there might be some Fn key combinations that would perform 'reset' function, but I guess not [As an aside, I asked about the Fn + 'Prnt Scrn' and the Fn + 'Pause' key combinations, but didn't get much. Was suggested that I try the Fn + F5 keys during boot to get a 'listing', but I couldn't get that one to work either... Oh well]

My last ditch before yanking the battery was to retry the Power button. This time I held it down 3-5 sec and sure enough.... success!!!

Anyway, back up and running.

Just curious if anyone can shed like on the Fn keys I mentioned. The others seem well documented.

Thanks

Mark

 

Usually that happens when a software or driver takes forever to shut down.

You can edit your registry setting so it forces XP to shut down without waiting on those programs.

Start-->run-->regedit-->HKEY_USERS-->.DEFAULT-->CONTROL PANEL-->DESKTOP-->double click AUTOENDTASKS and change the value to 1

 

No, there shouldn't be any configuration of keys that will turn off the laptop/reset it except for the Power Button. Older laptops had a small rubber reset button somewhere at the back or at the bottom, which had to be pressed with a pen for example. I haven't seen anything newer with such reset buttons.

 

One place I see this often is when someone has thier laptop configured to 'sleep on lid closed'. They'll click Start/Shutdown, then close the lid while the shutdown is still initiating, which then starts the sleep/hibernate sequence, which totally messes with the shutdown.

Determine what you like to do, and configure the laptop accordingly. I.e., I have the laptop set up like this:
1) Sleep after X minutes.
2) Hibernate on Lid close.
3) When I do need to Shutdown, I make sure power is completely off before closing the lid.

 

My case was a hanging application [Corel] that I couldn't kill using the 'normal' process kill thru Cntrl-Alt-Del.

Windows [obviously] couldn't deal with it either.... hence the 'hang'

Don't know if my 'press and hold' on the power button is a 'feature' or just I didn't really get it the first time...

Anyone have info on my E1505 Fn key combinations???? [My original post in the Dell forum got moved, but figure someone thru here might know as well]

Thanks

Mark

 

I moved it because it is more of XP problem and not a dell problem. It is very common for the system to hang during shutdown, but it shouldn't happen. When i reformatted, it took about 2 minutes to fully shutdown and reboot. When i changed my registry key, the system would be shutdown under 20 seconds.

There isn't an FN combination to my knowledge on any of the inspirons that will restart the computer. The only combinations that have to do with boot up is FN+F2 (bios), FN+F12 for one time boot menu, FN+F8 for safe mode.

Laptops don't have the reset feature that desktops do. If your laptop freeze, you hold the power button for 5 seconds until it turns off, then reboot.

 

The press and hold is the reset button. I have the same problem with my desktop (also a Dell, actually. Well, that an a eMachine too, but we don't like to talk about it much). When either of them get's stuck (in shutdown or if it's just freezing up) I just press and hold the power button on my desktop and after about 5 seconds it will shutdown, usually no matter what. Then I can restart it and pick up from where I left off.

So to answer your question, yes. It is a feature.

Edit> Gahh! beat me to it.

 

The press and holding of the power button does a hard shutdown, not reset.

If Corel is the problem i suggest reinstalling it.

It's really annoying when programs just don't seem to wanna go to sleep.

Happens a lot I guess, but for some reason with my experience with laptops thus far, which isn't much, I've noticed laptops being a bit more moody than desktops.

Why? I dunno really, but I'm guessing it has to do with the different power states and going from ac power to battery power.

Cheers and goodluck,
Mike