My mom has a Compaq Presario from about 1998. Every thing has been fine up until about the last year. Someone must have changed a setting on the computer because it won't shut down. It goes through the shut down process and gets to the screen that says "It's now safe to turn of your computer." When ever you press the power button, it does nothing. Now my mom has resorted to using the little black switch on the back of the computer to cut the power off and on. She recently had knee surgery, so this option of going to the black switch isn't a possibility any more. Is there a setting or something to fix this? I recently switched her from Win2K to XP and that didn't make any difference, so that led me to believe it was a setting. Any help is appreciated.

Marc

Have her hold the power button in for about 10 seconds, that should turn the pc off. A fix would be to go in the bios and set the power button to instant off.

Thanks! I'll let you know if I have any more problems.

Ok, well I got over here figuring it wouldnt be any problem to get into the bios. But, upon startup, it very quickly flashes the "Compaq" screen and goes straight to Windows startup. I've tried Esc, F2, and F8, but can't seem to get into Bios no matter what I try. Any suggestions?

What model is it?

Presario 5660

"In order to enter the Presario BIOS for setup, reboot the computer and watch the screen for the red Compaq logo. When you see the Compaq logo, and the cursor appears in the upper right corner of the screen, press the F10 key on the keyboard. Your various BIOS configurations will then be available to you."

Thanks AbecX for looking up the instructions. Damn. Nothing worked. I tried holding it in for 10, even 15 secs at a time and nothing happened. As far as finding it in the Bios, no luck there. Didn't see anything where i could change the settings for power.

Well, I got to thinking and figured out that the power button wasn't working at all...PERIOD. So I pulled the machine apart, and sure enough, the little plug to the power button had come undone. Problem solved. It works fine now, except that I have to hold the power button down for 7 seconds at the "it's ok to turn your computer off now" message. I'll still be on the prowl figuring out how to get it to turn off instantly. Thanks for all your help.

lol how'd it come undone?!

Couldnt tell ya. Only thing I can think of is that they were in there cleaning off all the dust a while back and must have pulled the front panel off and not realized that plug was down there.

Now I've got a different problem. I've got a printer that only wants to print the very last page of any given document that's 2 pages in length or longer. I'm sure I'll post up about that some time soon if I can't figure it out.

There should be a setting in the BIOS for PNP OS. If there is then set it and you should be good to go. Also check in the Power Options under XP and there should be a setting for APM(Automatic Power Management) and that will allow Windows to issue power off commands to the motherboard.

beacuse its a compaq... more the reason to build your own