Emergency shut down during power cut

  • Thread starter Thread starter Christopher R. Lee
  • Start date Start date
C

Christopher R. Lee

Hello,

I have an uninterruptible power supply (UPS), but when there is a power cut
it doesn't always leave me enough time to shut down the computer properly,
even when Vista hasn't decided to update itself during the shutdown
sequence.

UPSs come with software that's designed to take control automatically, but
as I can't afford to buy a new one for each new operating system, I havn't
looked to see if there is a model that shuts down Vista in a reasonably
short time.

Does Vista have any kind of emergency shutdown facility, or is it designed
exclusively for Californians?

Regards
 
Christopher said:
Hello,

I have an uninterruptible power supply (UPS), but when there is a power
cut it doesn't always leave me enough time to shut down the computer
properly, even when Vista hasn't decided to update itself during the
shutdown sequence.

UPSs come with software that's designed to take control automatically,
but as I can't afford to buy a new one for each new operating system, I
havn't looked to see if there is a model that shuts down Vista in a
reasonably short time.

Does Vista have any kind of emergency shutdown facility, or is it
designed exclusively for Californians?
Click to expand...

You don't need to buy a new UPS for each new operating system unless
your UPS is incredibly old and/or from a unknown mftr. If your UPS is
made by one of the big guys - APC, Belkin, Tripplite - they will have
updated software on their websites. Go there and download the software,
after making sure it is compatible with Vista. Then you can control how
your computer shuts down during a power outage.

I don't understand what Californians have to do with this subject at all.


Malke
 
make sure the battery is not losing it's charge and your load isn't too much
for it

--
Licensed Boating Capt. Jonathan Perreault
http://www.AllAboutGames.BraveHost.com
- note: click continue, when it ask about security certificate -

Best Comments From Users:
Vista is satan's way to bring hell to earth. -Me

A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely
foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools. -Web

No Matter The Problem Even With Linux, It's Microsoft's And Windows's
Faults -Everyone
 
I bought mine in a local hypermarket, but unusually for that sort of retail
outlet it's manufactured locally (saves CO2 transporting heavy stuff across
the Atlantic/Pacific, I suppose).

The firm is Infosec, who make very good stuff. However, like many suppliers
they don't yet have a Vista driver for this model. Also, since they are more
geared up for big industrial installations than home applications, the
interface is RS232, which is still standard in industry and laboratories and
will be for a long time to come.

I suppose I could buy a RS232 card or USB converter.

But my point is really that it should be possible to shut down an OS cleanly
and quickly by means of some kind of panic button/icon. Ideally (some
hope...), the PC should have a button (like the old reset button) that can
be activated by the user or the UPS, and read by the OS without any
proprietary UPS software.

In reply to another reply, I mentioned California, because hardware and
software designers need to be aware that in many parts of the world power
consumption and power outages are a limiting factor for the use of
computers, and big UPSs cost money. The same arguments are valid for
uninterruptible broadband access, but that's another story.

Regards
 
You have to size the battery capacity of the UPS with the electrical load
you have applied to the UPS. I get a good 30 minutes of battery backup time
when there is a power failure. You either have an almost dead battery or
your UPS is under the capacity you really need.

--

Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)
 
How long is not enough time? Minutes or seconds?

The fastest shutdown sequence would probably be to hibernate. This dumps
the entire contents of memory to your hard drive and then switches off.
It's what laptops do when the battery dies. Go into Power Options in the
Control Panel, click "Choose what the power buttons do" and then set either
the power button or the sleep key (whichever comes to hand quickest in an
emergency) to Hibernate.

The reason I asked how long is that it isn't instant. It takes about forty
seconds on my system. If that's too long then obviously I haven't helped!

Sleep is quicker than Hibernate but don't be tempted by this as I believe it
doesn't power off completely.
 
Rojo Habe said:
How long is not enough time? Minutes or seconds?
Click to expand...

The UPS starts beeping as soon as the power is off, then it becomes more and
more inistent. As usual with these things there's no indication how much
time I really have.
The fastest shutdown sequence would probably be to hibernate. This dumps
the entire contents of memory to your hard drive and then switches off.
It's what laptops do when the battery dies.
Click to expand...

I should have thought of that; in a properly engineered system, a
non-portable PC would "know" it has a UPS, and also be able to detect a
mains power outage.
Go into Power Options in the Control Panel, click "Choose what the power
buttons do" and then set either the power button or the sleep key
(whichever comes to hand quickest in an emergency) to Hibernate.
Click to expand...

Thanks, I'll try that.
The reason I asked how long is that it isn't instant. It takes about
forty seconds on my system. If that's too long then obviously I haven't
helped!
Click to expand...

If it's that short, why don't PCs have a small battery built-in as in a
portable? At least, as far as I'm aware you can't buy a battery like that.
For this idea to work, M$ would have to think of another way of
automatically installing their updates. This should not be done at shut-down
time, since when a user tells a computer to switch off it should do just
that, within a specified time limit. A side effect of current practice
encourages is that users tend to leave equipment not totally shut down,
which raises economy and safety issues.
 
A small battery, as that in a portable, would last a pitifully short amount
of time in a desktop. You see how heavy a UPS is.

90% of the weight is the battery that is large enough to be used for a
desktop.

--

Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)
 
It does not beep because it is almost out of power it beeps just to let you
know that your primary power is gone and that it is being used to run your
PC. What is the size or rated power of your UPS?
 
Christopher R. Lee said:
For this idea to work, M$ would have to think of another way of
automatically installing their updates. This should not be done at
shut-down time, since when a user tells a computer to switch off it should
do just that, within a specified time limit.
Click to expand...

Windows downloads the updates and waits until shutdown so as not to
interfere with your work. Some updates can, and will, be installed
automatically in the background. Some require a reboot to complete them.
It is these that are normally performed at shutdown time. There's normally
an icon in the taskbar telling you the update is ready to be installed and
there's nothing to stop you installing it manually by double-clicking the
icon; the computer will reboot as part of the update process.
A side effect of current practice encourages is that users tend to leave
equipment not totally shut down, which raises economy and safety issues.
Click to expand...

I believe the general MS philosophy is to encourage the use of Sleep mode,
which puts the computer into an extremely low-power state. To the user it
looks almost identical to hibernation. The big difference is it doesn't
save the RAM to the hard drive, therefore a minimal amount of power is used
to keep the memory alive. The hard drive, graphics card and all other
hardware are switched off, the fans power down and to all intents and
purposes the thing looks as though it's powered off. Because the RAM is
kept intact, and a minimal amount of power is still being used, it only
takes about five seconds to switch back on, as opposed to maybe thirty to
come out of hibernation. Everything is as it was when you left it. Any
open applications are still running and all open windows are in the same
state you left them in. I've even hit the Sleep button in the middle of a
game, just to see what happened, and when I switched back on it never missed
a beat! I've never seen a previous version of Windows manage that.

Even if you do a full shutdown your power supply will still be drawing
current unless you physically switch it off, either using the power switch
on the back (if there is one) or at the wall outlet. Sleep mode uses very
little more power than this.

Laptops (and presumably desktop PCs with appropriate drivers for the UPS)
are able to transition from Sleep to Hibernate in the event of a power (or
battery) failure.

I tend to shut down my PC (or at least reboot it) about once a week; other
than that I just hit the sleep button.
 
In message <[email protected]>
Christopher R. Lee said:
If it's that short, why don't PCs have a small battery built-in as in a
portable?
Click to expand...

Because at that level, batteries are relatively cheap, the problem is
the electronics to get you over to the backup power and back again, and
charging circuitry.
At least, as far as I'm aware you can't buy a battery like that.
Click to expand...

You'll be well into 75% of the cost of the cheaper UPSes you see today
which will run you for several minutes. Most consumers wouldn't bother.
For this idea to work, M$ would have to think of another way of
automatically installing their updates. This should not be done at shut-down
time, since when a user tells a computer to switch off it should do just
that, within a specified time limit.
Click to expand...

Then configure your PC appropriately. Or, when you need to do a
shutdown in a hurry, choose that option rather then the "Install updates
and shut down" button.

If you aren't aware, when you have updated pending, hit the Right arrow
button over to the right of the shutdown button and you'll have a "Shut
Down" button which will shutdown without installing updates.

Second, if an application initiates a shutdown, updates won't install
unless that application uses the appropriate API to tell the OS to shut
down. UPS software will normally shut down without the updates
installing.
A side effect of current practice
encourages is that users tend to leave equipment not totally shut down,
which raises economy and safety issues.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure you mean with regards to economy issues, although if it's
energy consumption, that's roughly the same whether it requests a reboot
and wastes the user's time AND uses electricity, or does it during a
shutdown, using only additional electricity.

As far as safety, if you have actual safety concerns about your computer
while it's running, maybe you need a new machine.
 
My UPS is an IPEL 350 Evolution, 350 VA, specified for 8 min at full power,
with a limit of 30 min.

That should be adequate for a normal PC, but since I can't afford/don't want
to buy a new one just to please Vista, there is no way I can make it tell
the PC to shut down.

In reply to various other posts:

- Vista may well provide an icon to indicate that an update is pending, but
you may not be there to see it, and anyway it's hard to can't keep track of
all those little incomprehensible icons.

- There was some mention of sleep and hibernation modes. There's nothing
like that on my recent Dell/Vista. French Vista only has Veille (= standby)
and Arreter (shutdown) on the start menu, and right clicking has no effect.

In conclusion, what's needed (but is obviously too much to ask for at the
moment) with desktop PCs and their operating systems is safe and automatic
shutdown when the power goes off, without any hardware- and
software-specific external accessories. This should need only a few seconds
of backup power, and not much power at all if the RAM could be dumped to
flash memory.

Regards
 
Christopher R. Lee said:
In conclusion, what's needed (but is obviously too much to ask for at the
moment) with desktop PCs and their operating systems is safe and automatic
shutdown when the power goes off, without any hardware- and
software-specific external accessories. This should need only a few
seconds of backup power, and not much power at all if the RAM could be
dumped to flash memory.
Click to expand...

The operating system can already cope with this; it's how it behaves on
laptops.

As for the hardware: you may or may not find a PC that can operate on
internal batteries, or you could maybe design and build one yourself, using
a laptop motherboard as a starting base? Either way, it's not the fault of
Windows that your PC (or mine) can't detect power failures.
- There was some mention of sleep and hibernation modes. There's nothing
like that on my recent Dell/Vista. French Vista only has Veille (=
standby) and Arreter (shutdown) on the start menu, and right clicking has
no effect.
Click to expand...


My shutdown menu on the Start menu has the following options: Switch User,
Log Off, Lock, Restart, Sleep and Shut Down. Just to be sure we're looking
at the same thing, you click the Start button and hover the mouse over the
right-pointing arrow (to the right of the power-off and lock icons). The
power-off icon sleeps by default (unless there are critical updates pending)
but can be configured in the control panel to shut down instead. It's very
odd that you only have two options on yours, particularly since Standby has
been superseded by Sleep. It's seems strange that Microsoft should restrict
your choices on the basis of what primary language is installed. I can only
assume that your copy of Windows came preloaded on your machine and that for
some reason the vendor has set it up like this.

The only ideal solution that will fit your needs is if Infosec come up with
a Vista-compatible version of their software. The product still seems to be
available on their web site, so I'm sure they will. Have you tried
contacting them?

Oh, and to answer a point in your original post: yes, you can buy USB serial
port adaptors. Amazon France seem to be charging more than Amazon UK but
here are a couple of links:

http://www.amazon.fr/Vision-Systems...1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1193253213&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.co.uk/USB-RS232-C...1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1193253083&sr=8-1
 
No wonder then.
You would then need a 700 VA unit to run at full power for only 16 min and
350VA is probably about the consumption of your PC. Sounds like you should
get a 1.5 or 3 KAVA unit.
 
In message <[email protected]>
Christopher R. Lee said:
My UPS is an IPEL 350 Evolution, 350 VA, specified for 8 min at full power,
with a limit of 30 min.

That should be adequate for a normal PC, but since I can't afford/don't want
to buy a new one just to please Vista, there is no way I can make it tell
the PC to shut down.

In reply to various other posts:

- Vista may well provide an icon to indicate that an update is pending, but
you may not be there to see it, and anyway it's hard to can't keep track of
all those little incomprehensible icons.

- There was some mention of sleep and hibernation modes. There's nothing
like that on my recent Dell/Vista. French Vista only has Veille (= standby)
and Arreter (shutdown) on the start menu, and right clicking has no effect.
Click to expand...

I suspect you misunderstood my message, there is no right click, rather,
if you've fond the restart/sleep/shutdown menu, you're in the correct
place already.

This menu will let you shutdown without installing updates even if
updates are pending.
In conclusion, what's needed (but is obviously too much to ask for at the
moment) with desktop PCs and their operating systems is safe and automatic
shutdown when the power goes off, without any hardware- and
software-specific external accessories. This should need only a few seconds
of backup power, and not much power at all if the RAM could be dumped to
flash memory.
Click to expand...

That's more or less what hybrid sleep does, although the RAM data is
written to drive rather then flash. If the mains never die, your data
is still in RAM, if the system power does get cut, it gets restored from
disk instead. Either way, you're back where you left off.

You need hardware (a battery) and software (to interface with that
battery), but if it's a common UPS Windows has everything you need built
in.
 
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