Windows Shutdown from an Icon!

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Shannon

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This is old this thing but I didn't know it until I was reading the help section out of a PC mag from last month. You learn lots of new stuff out of the help section.

To shutdown your computer from a desktop icon, make a new shortcut to c:\windows\rundll.exe user.exe exitwindows.

Make sure you remove the space between user.exe and exitwindows. Don't remove the space between rundll.exe and user.exe.
 
Should one always shut down there computer? I always tend to leave mine on. Are there any adverse effects to leaving your comp on all the time?
 
I don't know. Ask the hardware masters like Y2TUSCAN. If you leave your monitor on, your monitor will go fuzzy and if you leave you leave your speakers on your as sure as **** to have them blow up. I left them on, well my friend did actually, overnight - wasn't playing any music or nothing and the damn things blew up. But, I got some better speaker out of it. :D

Auditek Mini Super Woofer System - 440w.
 
Originally posted by boombexus
Should one always shut down there computer? I always tend to leave mine on. Are there any adverse effects to leaving your comp on all the time?
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Other than ecological... no not really. But that's just the hippy in me.

Most relatively modern PC's have energy savng on them and certainly windows allows for power management. The only thing i've really found is that windows does like to be rebooted every so often. That's down to poor memory use though. Compaq and IBM once advised against switching PC's off every night (i used to work at a service centre about 10 to 15 years ago) the constant shock of 240 volts hitting a PSU every morning i guess... Don't know if that still holds true?

There you go what a lot of help i was... :rolleyes: :lol:
 
No, leaving your computer on won't hurt it. Actually, turning your computer on or off a couple times a day may do more damage than leaving it on. Unless power consumption or CPU heat is a concern, leave it on for the day and shut it down when you go to sleep at night.

Monitors should always be turned off when you're not using it or the monitor will develop phosphor burns. Phosphor burns is when the image that the monitor displays are burned on the glass. Also, eventually, all CRT monitors will "die". So, making them "live" a little longer by turning them off is a good thing.

I never heard of speakers blowing up :lol: , but they should be turned off too. I had my old monitor blow up in my face before. It smelled like burnt silicon in my room for weeks!
 
work computer = on all the time
home computer = off and unplugged when used

constant shock of 240 volts hitting a PSU every morning i guess... Don't know if that still holds true?
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Yeah thats true to a certain extent, most people who turn their computer off at night and on again have had their PSU blow here at work. Although that could just be IBM and their crappy PSU units as well :p


See Ive just got in from work and I just unlocked my computer and off I go. Odd though my new home PC kept powering on all by itself yesterday, but I think maybe it had to do with me leaving one end of a crossover cable in the NIC, so I disabled the wake on lan bit and it seems to have stopped. Very spooky though
 
Well, they didn't actually explode. They just got screwed and no sound was coming out. I checked to see if it was in the right hole at the back of the PC and everything.
 
Slip2Rock is right. There is little advantage or otherwise to switching your machine off at the end of a day or not. Of course, it uses less power, but the continual heat cycles going through the components don't help them to last. Monitors should definitely be switched off, which can be done by the system on a decent monitor, just go into the Energy settings in the Display Properties, and select "Turn off monitor after xx minutes", where xx is a number of your choice. The monitor will enter standby, and use only enough power to check the signal cable. However, you should make xx a number greater than about 10 minutes, because continually cycling the power to the screen is not a good thing.

Slip is also right about the conventional wisdom of never switching off old hardware. Hard disks particularly, and especially the ones that used air bearings, were particularly vulnerable to power cycles. This isn't really the case any more.

And all versions of Windows benefit from the odd reboot every so often, especially the 9x versions, since most are very poor at cleaning up after closed programs.
 
My personal habbits with XP is to shut it down about once a week. If I am leaving town, I'll shut it down and power 'everything' off. With my Win98 machines, I'd have to shut it down atleast every other day to clear the memory, as suggested by Slip2Rock, explaining the memory leaks cohierent with pre-win2k OS's.

I must be one of the lucky ones. I hear of peoples PSU's going out all the time. I have never had one PSU go bad on all the computers I manage at work. Some of them are as old as 286's that still run as dumby terminals (I call them dumb now, because hey, their only 286's).
 
Should these tips be applied to Macs too? (I'm running Jaguar.)
 
I turn my computer off at night. For about 17 hours a day it won't be used, so I don't really see any need for it to be running all that time.
 
Yeah, pretty much. Set the monitor to sleep after 30 minutes of inactivity; same with the hard drive. You have an iBook, though, so that's going to be a little different.

I leave the G4 up, and dialed in, pretty much all the time, except for the above sleep settings. If I know I'm going to be gone all day and into the evening, I'll shut it down the night before. With the iBook, I'd shut it off entirely when you go to bed (since you have to break the modem connection to carry it anyway), then fire it up when you need to, and let it sleep while it is idle but plugged in.
 
Mine at home serves a few files while I'm away so I just leave it on. It also takes a while to boot because of all the hardware I've got in it.

Mine at work ... well I'm not paying for the power or the computer, so it stays on all the time (:
 
i turn my computer off only when i am told, it sometimes stays on for days, then sometimes only for an hour, my monitor is always on never off, it has had no damage at all, infact the monitor i have in my bedroom has been on for a good 3 years and its been fine.
 
Originally posted by neon_duke
Yeah, pretty much. Set the monitor to sleep after 30 minutes of inactivity; same with the hard drive. You have an iBook, though, so that's going to be a little different.

I leave the G4 up, and dialed in, pretty much all the time, except for the above sleep settings. If I know I'm going to be gone all day and into the evening, I'll shut it down the night before. With the iBook, I'd shut it off entirely when you go to bed (since you have to break the modem connection to carry it anyway), then fire it up when you need to, and let it sleep while it is idle but plugged in.
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Okay, good, that's exactly what I'm doing right now... :)
 
Originally posted by Pako
My personal habbits with XP is to shut it down about once a week. If I am leaving town, I'll shut it down and power 'everything' off. With my Win98 machines, I'd have to shut it down atleast every other day to clear the memory, as suggested by Slip2Rock, explaining the memory leaks cohierent with pre-win2k OS's.

I must be one of the lucky ones. I hear of peoples PSU's going out all the time. I have never had one PSU go bad on all the computers I manage at work. Some of them are as old as 286's that still run as dumby terminals (I call them dumb now, because hey, their only 286's).
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Yeah, 286's are weak, I've never used one... The oldest I've used are AppleIIe's and 386's. I have a P1 200mhzMMX in my closet in my room which I use occasionally(I leave it in my closet because my room's tiny, and no, my closet isn't big, it's 3'x3'.)

We(my family) usually turn computers on around 10 or so in the morning on weekends, then turn them off around 10-11P.M. But I've also heard the hybernate mode is pretty good, but not all computers support it, is that true? Hybernate is when your computer basically shuts down, but everything in the memory is cached onto your HDD until you reboot, then it goes back into your memory.

Y2Tuscan, what're your thoughts of hybernating? Is it any good?

Oh yeah, when you power your PC, use a powerstrip. Then, once your PC powers down, flip the switch, and your monitor and speakers, as well as anything else like printers(which you should only have on when you're printing, or else the ink can dry up), modems, scanners, etc, will turn off. Then when you flip it on, everything, including your PC, turns on. It's great if you're extremely lazy, like me, because you can turn everything on with the flick of a toe;)D)
 
P.S. Tuscan, do you think a 286 could be a server for media files? Or would you need at least a P2 for that? Some time I'm going to put a 250GB HDD in a really low-end computer, install a bare-bones linux OS, and just have it be a server for wav's and avi/mpeg/divx files. The reason I'd use wav's is because the sound quality is supperior. And hopefully by the time I get around to doing this, HDD's will be cheaper because of the new data-storage devices coming out in a few years... Something like 10DVD's in a square inch. They've actually got it down to size of atoms that move around in it, impressive!
 
I find that a lot of machines don't restart properly from a hibernation, so I'm not a fan.

As for the ink drying up on inkjet printers when left switched on, I've never heard of that. I never, but never, switch my printer off, and there's nothing wrong with its ink life. I'm thinking "urban legend" on that one.
 
Hey Gile my computer never starts properly from hibernation so ive stopped doing that too, and how could the ink dry from being left on? this is urban legend for sure.
 
Originally posted by rjensen11
Oh yeah, when you power your PC, use a powerstrip. Then, once your PC powers down, flip the switch, and your monitor and speakers, as well as anything else like printers(which you should only have on when you're printing, or else the ink can dry up), modems, scanners, etc, will turn off. Then when you flip it on, everything, including your PC, turns on. It's great if you're extremely lazy, like me, because you can turn everything on with the flick of a toe;)D)
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Um, you might want to use caution with that... computers and other electronics don't like to be suddenly shut off from their electricity supply, and much prefer to be turned off via their own butt-oon and then cut from their electron flow... ;)
 
Originally posted by youth_cycler

Um, you might want to use caution with that... computers and other electronics don't like to be suddenly shut off from their electricity supply, and much prefer to be turned off via their own butt-oon and then cut from their electron flow... ;)
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Yeah, I let my computer go down completley, then I flip the switch. The thing about the printers and ink may be for some specific models or something. It has something to do with how the ink cartrige is open when the printer is flipped on, but if you cut the power source before it turns off, then the cartrige doesn't close. I know it messed up one of my printers because of that, and I've heard similar things from other people. Then again, it could be certain HP color printers or something...
 

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