Windows 10 will not shut down

I have Gateway DX4850; note that acer bought Gateway in 2007 and that is why I am posting on this website.

I recently completed a "clean install" of Windows 10 on this PC. Although the Gateway support page only has drivers for Windows 7, the installation was smooth and Windows found all drivers with the Windows Update function.

I have just one problem: when I hit shutdown, my computer will not turn off completely. The screen will go blank, the light indicating that the hard disk is working will go blank, put the tower stays on.

I have tried numerous fixes, such as:

* disabling "Fast Restart" and "hibernate";

* typing "bcdedit /set disabledynamictick yes" in the Command Prompt;

* troubleshooting the "Power" (found nothing);

* using "shutdown /s" (does not work).

Note that I do not have Intel Rapid Storage (this was the issue for some users).

I tried contacting Microsoft, but they told me to refer to Gateway. I contacted Acer (Gateway) and they told me:

[...] isn't actually a model that we support for Windows 10, unfortunately. Though Windows 10 can be installed and it may work to some extent, we don't have any updated drivers available for it and likely won't at any point in the future. You could always try posting on our Windows 10 community, as there may be other users who have run into similar issues and may have a solution.

So, does anyone have any ideas?

Accepted answers

JosephAssalian

Hello everyone.

After a couple of weeks of manually powering down my desktop computer after having selected SHUT DOWN in Windows 10, I decided to re-intall Windows 10. The previous was a clean install (not an upgrade from Windows 7) and I proceeded the same way. And it worked - here is what I did to solve the problem!

I tried disabling Secure Boot in my BIOS, but that option was not there; I guess I have a legacy BIOS then.

I inserted my USB stick (obtained from Media Creation Tool) and hit F12 to select my USB stick to boot. I had two choices for my USB Stick: 1 EFI and 1 non-EFI. I chose the non-EFI and installed Windows 10.

After installing Windows 10, I did all my Windows updates, including software and drivers from Microsoft (no drivers from external sources, just Microsoft). I even installed Office 2010, configured my Outlook, and installed some more third-party software that I use.

One driver that was installed before and that is not there now is the Realtek (for the sound card). But my sound works fine. Could that have been the problem? Can not know for sure, but I am happy with my installation so far.

All comments

JordanB

It probably wouldn't hurt to try the intel driver update utility (assuming your computer is intel based) and maybe it will have an updated chipset driver....which may or may not help.

http://www.intel.com/p/en_US/support/detect

techy

look through the bios settings, look to see if it selected by itself EFI for your harddrive or dvd rom and if so change it to one that is not, I had this happen to me on the same system and it selected my dvd drive as efi of which left the power led on when i shut the system down, if it is your harddrive you "may" have to re-install windows again as windows does not like the change, Windows 10 will run fine on that system but you will have to source updated drivers yourself though the default Win 10 drivers are good.

JosephAssalian

Hello Jordan B. I tried using the Intel Chipset driver for Windows 7 that Gateway suggests and that did not work. I will however try the Intel driver update utility as I know I have an i5 processor (Intel based). Will keep you all posted on the results.

Thanks again!

JordanB

Ok sounds good. As techy said, it probably is a bios issue.....but it won't hurt to run Intel driver update utility.

JosephAssalian

Hello again JordanB. Should I uninstall the Intel Chipset driver that I installed from the Gateway driver page before running the Intel driver update utility? Thanks.

JosephAssalian

Hello techy. Thanks for the reply; I haven't tried playing around with the BIOS, besides flashing it to make sure I have the latest version.

A couple of follow-up questions before I try this tonight:

(1) How would I know if I have to re-installation Windows 10 again?

(2) When you say re-install, can I just reset Windows 10 to not lose my documents/files? Or do I have to do a full clean install (where everything will we wiped)?

(3) Would the possible re-install be for the hard drive to dvd rom or dvd rom to hard drive setting change for EFI?

(4) Please clarify what you mean by source updated drivers. I use all the Windows 10 drivers currently, except for my Logitech wireless combo that I downloaded from Logitech's website.

Many thanks.

joeoil

I have the same problem with my Acer Aspire M3920 (4 years old).

The computer worked fine after upgrade to Win 10, but after I deleted all partitions and did a clean install of Win 10 the computer will not shut down completely. Power light is on and the fan is working, so I have to make a forced shut down. My computer can neither wake up from sleep mode. Have to do a forced shut down before I can turn on my pc again.

I have tried every solution described on Microsoft community, but none of them solved the problem. The latest I was told was that it is most likely a driver or BIOS issue. But since my computer is a bit old? Microsoft could not guarantee that there would be new drivers or BIOS for my computer.

padgett

OK folks, try shutting down overnight then restart. Open Control panel>administrative tools>event viewer>Windows Logs>System. Scroll down to the last entry from yesterday (should be an Information ) Does it say "The operating system is shutting down at system time ‎2015‎-‎09-xxxx" or "The system is entering sleep." or something else ?

I suspect you are requesting Shut Down and it is really Sleeping. Does that fit what you are seeing.‎

JosephAssalian

JordanB: I ran the Intel Driver Update Utility and it did not find anything to update.

JosephAssalian

techy: I found one mention of EFI in the BIOS, and that is EFI Device Priority. The default settings are:

* 1st Boot Device: Windows Boot Manager

* 2nd Boot Device: EFI: P0: WDC (my hard drive)

Am I in the right place?

techy

that is the right place, the boot manager will always be first but the second item is showing the use of EFI for the hard drive, I found that when you set up that system there is list displayed in the bios usually showing the dvd and harddrives with efi {drive} or just the drive itself, do not select the efi as with this computer it seems to have issues with that setup and windows 8 or 10, you don`t need it to run either of those O.S, it likely changed when you did a clean install, try changing it save it to the bios and reboot, if windows does not like it then you may get some error like it can`t find drive c or boot path, that will tell you that you need to re-install windows, but it may just boot, windows 10 does strange things

JosephAssalian

techy: Sorry if I do not understand, but I cannot select a non-EFI hard drive in the BIOS. I do not see that option. Any additional instructions would help.

Here is a manual that shows what my BIOS looks like:

http://www.manualslib.com/manual/232908/Acer-Aspire-Z1620.html?page=63#manual

I also checked in Disk Management, and I have three partitions of my hard drive:

* 450 MB (Recovery Partition)

* 100 MB (EFI System Partition)

* 931 GB NTFS (Boot, Page File, Crash Dump, Primary Partition)

I even tried cleaning and deleted that partition in diskpart but Windows wouldn't let me.

JordanB

Ok. Check padgett's post on previous page and try his suggestions first.

If it were my computer, this is what I would do:

1. Save my important files to a backup.

2. Use diskpart clean to wipe my HDD

http://forums.crucial.com/t5/The-Cru/Reset-your-SSD-to-factory-settings-Windows-DiskPart/ba-p/162503

3. load the default bios settings on my computer

4. re-install windows 10. I would select "custom install". Then I would click on the drive where I want to install it (it should say "unallocated space"). I would then click "next". Do not format or partition the drive. The windows 10 installer will automatically format and partition the HDD and install windows 10.

5. I would check Acer's (or Gateway) website for drivers/BIOS. If they don't have windows 10 drivers for your computer, then there's not much you can do except look for drivers elsewhere if you have problems.

http://us.acer.com/ac/en/US/content/drivers

http://www.gateway.com/worldwide/support/

6. If you continue to have problems, you can continue to try to troubleshoot or just go back to previous OS.

Important Note: If the computer wasn't previously upgraded to windows 10 (and activated), don't try this procedure as it is not the proper way to do a free upgrade to windows 10. If your computer was previously upgraded to windows 10 and activated, then it's ok to use the procedure above.

JordanB

I almost forgot.......

I don't know enough about Acer/Gateway UEFI BIOS for Windows 7 64 bit to give you a detailed suggestion here....but if you really wanted to run windows 10, you could check to see if your BIOS supports legacy mode. And then install windows 10 in legacy mode. MBR Legacy mode is less secure than UEFI/GPT.

But again, I don't know enough about the UEFI from 2011 to say if it will work or you'd be wasting your time. Someone else on this forum might know though and can give you tips about Acer's UEFI from 2011.....and whether or not is supports legacy mode properly...so you can run 64 bit windows 10.

Ironfly or padgett might be able to check their secret sources. Smiley Wink

I would check in to legacy mode as complete last resort. And truthfully, I personally wouldn't do it. But there will be several million people running windows 10 in legacy mode, so you wouldn't be alone.

joeoil

Re padgett

I looked at event viewer > windows logs > system, and it is correct that the first "information" note after start up says "The system goes into sleep mode".

So far so good, what next?

padgett

And the b(&&&)& forum software just lost amother long post (Authentication Failure) I do not have time to repost but look for a second DWM-2 (Desktop Windows Manager) logon folloing your logoff. Suspect that is the key.

JosephAssalian

Hello all.

I have the latest version of the BIOS installed on my machine (from Gateway website), and it seems to support EFI as it is mentionned in the BIOS settings. I also checked in msinfo32.exe and the BIOS mode is UEFI. Should I try looking for another version of the BIOS (outside of the Gateway website)?

I am very hesitant to re-install Windows 10 as it is running fine - except for it not turning off completely when I select "Shut down". I may just keep it like that and just manually hit the power button on the tower to turn it off completely. Windows does not tell me that it was not shut down properly, so it does not seem to have any repercussions.

The only reason I would re-install everything is if you guys are certain that installing Windows 10 with "Legacy BIOS" would fix my problem, but it seems that it is hard to pinpoint the exact cause.

I talked to a computer guru at work and he suspects that power is still being fed to my motherboard (although my hard drive seems to turn off), but he is also not certain on what the cause might be...

Thanks for all your help. Any additional insight would be appreciated.

JordanB

If you have the latest BIOS from gateway website, then you have the correct BIOS and shouldn't use any other BIOS. Unless in the very unlikely event that they would update your BIOS (and it would be on gateway's website).

padgett

Bit more information:

When a Shut Down is requested and it goes to sleep instead, I found that while my logoff was happening a system login was taking place. These are the details I've found (compilation of events), but not why it is occuring:

++++++++++++++++++++++++++

An account was successfully logged on.
Subject:
Security ID:  SYSTEM
Account Name:  <systemname>$
Account Domain:
Logon ID:  0x3E7
Logon Information:
Logon Type:  5      (service)
Restricted Admin Mode: -
Virtual Account:  No
Elevated Token:  Yes
Impersonation Level:  Impersonation
New Logon:
Security ID:  SYSTEM
Account Name:  SYSTEM
Account Domain:  NT AUTHORITY
Logon ID:  0x3E7
Linked Logon ID:  0x0
Network Account Name: -
Network Account Domain: -
Logon GUID:  {00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000}
Privileges:  SeAssignPrimaryTokenPrivilege
   SeTcbPrivilege
   SeSecurityPrivilege
   SeTakeOwnershipPrivilege
   SeLoadDriverPrivilege
   SeBackupPrivilege
   SeRestorePrivilege
   SeDebugPrivilege
   SeAuditPrivilege
   SeSystemEnvironmentPrivilege
   SeImpersonatePrivilege
Special privileges assigned to new logon.
Subject:
Security ID:  Window Manager\DWM-2
Account Name:  DWM-2
Account Domain:  Window Manager
Logon ID:  0x1C1928
Privileges:  SeAssignPrimaryTokenPrivilege
   SeAuditPrivilege
   SeImpersonatePrivilege

billsey

Check to make sure you don't have a Task Scheduler event that relaunches a service when it's closed. That might happen quickly enough to stop a shutdown cycle.

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