Re: pressing power button off Vs. Start -> Turn off Computer

Hi Amy,

Ask him how he stops the car. Does he apply the brakes with appropriate pressure and come to a full stop, allowing the engine to idle down and for the vehicle's momentum to slow accordingly? Or does he just run into a brick wall? Doing the latter will slow the car down in a hurry, and may even work - for a time - if it's going slow enough, but there's no question as to which action will bring the car to the end of its life quicker.

If he doesn't have the patience to fix it himself, then get it to a local tech for proper troubleshooting.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP
http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/
Windows help - www.rickrogers.org

"Amy" <Amy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:02FE3783-3E59-479A-8BF1-ED8949710137@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Hi -
I'm having a terrible time trying to help my 75-yr-old dad, via long
distance, troubleshoot his computer that consistently freezes while shutting
down. He has XP, SP2. I've had him use System Restore twice, and both times
this has fixed the problem but trashed his McAfee VirusScan. He then
reverses the Restore to get back where he was before. He insists that it
seems to cause no problem to simply hold in the power button, to the count of
5, until the CPU powers off.

He has no patience to go through the arduous task working through the
troubleshooting steps of finding what system service, startup item, etc.
could be causing the problem. System Restore is about all he can handle.

I tell him it is a bad approach to shut down the computer by simply powering
it off. However, I'm just saying that because all my (computing) life I've
been told that!

So, is it really so bad to power off the computer using the power button
instead of using Start -> Turn Off Computer -> Turn Off? IF so, why?
Thanks, Amy

.