My PC is stuck at the It's Now Safe To Shut Down Your Computer screen

Have you ever had a PC that simply won't power down but is stuck at the black screen saying It's now safe to shut down your computer? It's rather annoying to have to hold down the Power button for 5 seconds in order to manually power down the system. In this short post you'll learn how to fix the It's now safe to shut down your computer issue.

This problem was fairly common in Windows 95-98 systems, but it also happens on modern XP, Vista and Windows 7 systems: they get stuck in the shutdown sequence and "forget" to auto-power off. There are several reasons why this may happen: the ACPI drivers are not installed properly (usually with laptop PCs), the Advanced Power Management is turned off in the BIOS settings (usually with desktop PCs), but the most common problem is a Registry entry that's missing or has the wrong value.

Here's how to fix the issue with the wrong/missing registry value.

Go to the Start button and select Run. A small popup window appears, where you need to type regedit and hit Enter. This will launch the Registry Editor. This is a versatile tool that can make or break your PC, so make sure you follow the instructions to the smallest iota.

Here's the Registry Editor main window. Notice that it resembles Windows Explorer in basically all details needed for this fix. First, the main window is split in a left and a right field. The left field has the familiar Tree-structure with folders and subfolders, and at the right you can see the content of these folders. At the very bottom notice that there is an Address Bar which matches the selected folder in the left part of the main window. Once you're familiar with the organization of the Registry Editor main window, we can  move on.

To fix the It's Now Safe to Shut Down your Computer, go to this folder:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon

Here's how the Registry Editor window looks like when at the Winlogon folder:

As you can see from the highlight-rectangles in the left and bottom side of the image, the location in the Tree structure is reported down in the Address bar. In the right half of the window you can see all the entries from the Winlogon folder, listed just like file lists in Windows Explorer. Here's the important part: Check to see if there is an entry named  PowerDownAfterShutdown. As you can see from the previous image, my PC has this entry, and it has a value of 0 (zero). The Zero value tells the PC to ignore this entry, while a value 1 tells the PC to execute the power down at shutdown command. Since I use a laptop, the ACPI (Advanced Computer Power Interface) tells my system that the shutdown sequence must end with system power down, which seems to override the PowerDownAfterShutdown Zero entry, which says Do NOT power down at shutdown. If my system was a desktop PC, chances are I'd be stuck at the black screen saying It's Now Safe to Shut Down Your Computer. This value should be 1, which means DO power down at shutdown. To change the value from Zero to One, double click the PowerDownAfterShutdown. The popup window has a field named Value Data and you simply change the 0 with 1 and click OK. This tells the PC that the shutdown procedure ends with a full power down of the system.

In some rare cases the PowerDownAfterShutdown entry is missing altogether, and you'll need to create it just as you create files and folders in Windows Explorer.

To create the PowerDownAfterShutdown entry, right-click in an empty field in the right part of the Registry Editor window (empty as in do not right-click on top of an existing entry). This will open a quick menu that allows you to create a New String Value:

This new String Value will appear at the bottom of the entries list and you will need to name it PowerDownAfterShutdown and hit Enter. Once you've created and named the registry entry, you'll need to set it's value so that the PC will know what to do with this entry. To edit the value of the newly created entry, double-click it and in the popup window enter 1 in the Value Data field and click OK.

With this new String Value properly named as PowerDownAfterShutdown, and properly configured Value Data of 1, your PC shutdown sequence should be complete and it should power off at shutdown so you won't be stuck at the It's Now Safe to Shut Down Your Computer.

This fix should work for both desktops and laptops. In case if you have a laptop like me and it is still does not power down, try setting the Value Data to 0 and see if that changes anything. If it doesn't, try installing the ACPI component. To do this, go to Control Panel-Add New Hardware. Have the wizard look for new hardware (it should not prompt that it found anything new), and at the next window, select Yes I have already connected the hardware and click OK. Then you'll see a list of available hardware. Scroll down to see if the Microsoft ACPI-Compliant Control Method Battery is on the list (if you have a laptop). If you have a desktop, there should be an entry ACPI Compliant Computer or alike. If this entry is not in the list, you'll need to scroll down at the bottom of the hardware list and select Install New Hardware. At the next window, select the Install the hardware I manually select from a list (Advanced) and click Next. From the new hardware list, select the NT Apm/Legacy Support, click Next and follow the instructions. This will install the missing Advanced Power Management module which will take care of the missing ACPI component. If this step also doesn't solve the power off at shutdown issue, you'll need to take a look at the BIOS settings. 

If you never ever worked in BIOS it may be best to take the computer to a trained professional or a geeky friend. If you're a DIY fan, please take a look at this short BIOS description. When you figure out which BIOS version you have, Google it for descriptions and guides and go to BIOS only after you're fairly confident that you know exactly what to do. Take notes as you read so you don't get stuck in BIOS not knowing what the next step was.

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USB to ATA/SATA Bridge failure

Pre Scriptum:

Quick fix: disable your system protection. 

Want more details of what not to do? Read on to learn from my mistakes :)

This week I spent some time scanning the market for a 3.5 inch external hard drive that would serve as a warehouse for all my data. I focused on a Samsung box of 1TB as the elegant solution (no worries that the box-hard drive assembly would refuse to work), and on the other hand, a Seatage Baracuda 1.5TB hard drive with a basically unknown Hantol 35S enclosure as the more affordable solution. The Samsung solution was 110USD while the Seagate-Hantol solution was 120USD. The byte per dollar ratio went in favor of the Seagate-Hantol, with the up side of having 3 years of waranty on the Seagate, and no warranty on the Hantol; compared to the one year warranty of the Samsung assembly. So, just a few hours ago I purchased the Seagate-Hantol assembly, asked the retailer to create one large NTFS partition to make sure the assembly works well. I paid the money and went home happy, hoping that I will finally empty my laptop 320GB Seagate that got down to having only 20GB of free space.

And then I got a problem.
I plugged in the assembly, the recognition began and instead of a notification "Your new hardware is ready for use" I got a dialog box asking me for drivers, I chose the Automatic driver installation, which copied the generic USB mass storage drivers but at the end I got a notification that the USB to ATA/Sata Bridge failed to install with the dredded "Access Denied" at the bottom of the screen. CRAP! Now what do I do? Why bad things happen to good folks like me? Why is it that after the hours spent in research I ended up picking the non-solution, and paid for it? This fussing and gnawing continued for a few minutes and after the mandatory dose of IT anger, I started thinking of possible solutions.
I hooked up the hard drive to my wife's HP 6820 laptop, and the disk worked perfectly. I tried the same on my secondary HP 6710s laptop and of course the new disk worked there also. Not to mention that it also worked in the store where I bought it. But it refused to install on my primary Acer Aspire 7720z laptop. Of course, next step: Google. Usually if there is a simple solution, a knowledgeable search will yield a solution within the hour. I found several similar problems with Vista, but none on the well known and reliable XP Professional. All three laptops use the same version of XP, have the same updates, use almost the same applications (with exception to Civ2 and Cashflow games on my Acer) but that's highly unlikely that they would cause any problems (other than my wife's complaints that I shouldn't play any games after 8PM if I want to have a good night rest).

Alas, the search continues.
To recap, the hard drive and box are brand new, and known to be working on at least 3 PCs of which 2 are in my house. They all have the same OS and applications, they all use Avast antivirus and they all have Comodo Internet Security... or do they? Hmm... actually they don't. Only my Acer has both Avast and Comodo.... could that be the case? Comodo Internet Security is a good piece of security as it also monitors the Windows Registry and the defense level is set to Safe Mode. For this reason I always get notifications whenever I try to install some new programs. It's a great way to keep the system integrity at bay as the Internet is full of various scripts and self-installers that advertize as Must Have web updates, needed media codecs and what not. So... could the added security feature of Comodo cause the USB to ATA/Sata Bridge failure and the dreaded "Access Denied" summary?

Let's see: First, I go to the bottom right corner, put the cursor over the Comodo icon, I double click it, and the Comodo Internet Security Summary screen is on. In the right bottom quadrant, I set the Proactive Defense from Safe Mode to Disabled, hook up the new hard drive assembly, and voila, the recognition process finishes with the long awaited "Your new hardware is ready for use." Ahh... the sweet taste of victory over the IT traps set by paranoid users (me).

So, after almost two hours of searching for a solution via removing the hardware in Device Manager, transferring drivers USBStor and Disk.sys, several restarts, switching back and forward between IDE and SATA modes in the BIOS, the solution to the problem of failing to install the USB to ATA/SATA bridge due to denial of access got solved by a simple shut down of the Comodo Proactive Defense. After the initial install, I turned the defense back on Safe Mode and now the hard drive works without any problems, just like all my other external hard drives. So don't waste your time with looking for updated drivers, and for heavens sake, don't listen to the retailer's advice to reinstall Windows. Just get rid of any proactive defense you may have, plug in your hard drive and after it's neatly installed, you can turn the defense back on.

Happy computing everybody.

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Mozilla Firefox speed tweaks

Firefox is one of the top browsers out there, but it has this nasty habbit ever since it came out. It's reckless with the memory usage. Many have complained about the memory management of Firefox and its toll on the system performance, so I spent some time researching the subject and compiled a set of steps you can make in order to speed up Firefox.

The first step is to open Firefox, and type about:config in the address bar, find the lines that follow, and change their default settings to the suggested values

Change the default settings with the new suggested values
network.prefetch-next = False
network.http.pipelining Set to true
network.http.pipelining.maxrequests Set to 8
network.http.max-connections Set to 96
network.http.max-connections-per-server Set to 32
network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server Set to 8
network.http.pipelining.ssl Set to true
network.http.proxy.pipelining Set to true

Disable the following
dom.disable_window_open_feature.menubar
dom.disable_window_move_resize
dom.disable_window_open_feature.titlebar
dom.disable_window_open_feature.toolbar

Faster browse through tabs
browser.tabs.tabMinWidth = 75

Plug the Firefox memory hole
1. browser.cache.memory.enable and set the value to true, you can double click the entry to make it true.
2. Now, Right-click any where create a new entry by selecting New >> Integer and name it browser.cache.memory.capacity
3. Now enter the value according to the size of your RAM memory.
If you have:
256 MB of RAM, enter “4096”
512 MB of RAM, enter “8192”
1 GB of RAM, enter “16384”
And so on

Improve better rendering of the display: select New > Integer. Type content.notify.interval as your preference name, click OK, enter 500000 (that’s five hundred thousand, not fifty thousand) and click OK again. Right-click again in the window and select New > Boolean. This time create a value called content.notify.ontimer and set it to True to finish the job.

Improve loading of the image on the screen: right-click in the window and select New > Integer. Type content.switch.threshold, click OK, enter 250000 (a quarter of a second) and click OK to finish.

JavaScript security tweak
Set “javascript.options.jit.content” to “False”

Restart Firefox and you should have a better working browser next time you go surfing.
This list is the result of my research on the net. I'm not the author of the suggestions, so I'm not taking any credit for the settings. All I did is to put them into one place where people can easily go through them and edit the settings.

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Cannot open volume for Direct Access

If you hate reading, this is the recipe:

Start-My Computer-left click-Manage-Services-Universal Plug and Play-double click-Automatic.

Restart.

Now if you want to read:

You start up your computer and you get a blue screen with this message "Cannot open volume for direct access."

You try to run a disk defragmentation utility and it gets stuck

You try to run a disk fix utility and that too gets stuck...

You do a web search and find that you are not the only one... and hopes rise... until you try the offered solutions and no result. Then you get angry at PCTools, Norton, BitDefender and other folks who try to make life more secure.

Here is how I got the problem and how I fixed it. It is VERY VERY SIMPLE. At least for me.

I did a fresh install of XPSP2, updated all the patches, installed BitDefender Internet Security 10, System Mechanic Portable, Office... and it all worked well. Then I installed TuneUp Utilities 2007, ran the "1-Click Maintenance" just for the fun of it, and tried to run VoptXP defratmenter. It got stuck.

I reset.

I got the evil message "Cannot open volume for disk access"

Did a web search at MS, Sysinternals, and several other, without any success to fix my problem.

Then I remembered that 1-Click Maintenance sugested to disable the Universal PnP service, calling it a threat to security. I complied. And I got the problem. So I just went to the Services tab, set Universal Plug and Play service on Automatic, disabled TuneUp Theme and reset. And that was it, problem solved. Hope this helps. If not... think what you did that got you into trouble, and undo the change. It is similar to repentance :)

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