Standy mode shutdown question

  • Thread starter Thread starter Ken Springer
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Ken Springer

Scenario:

My XP Pro computer is running, and I shutdown the computer using the
Standby mode.

This computer is powered through a power strip, and the strip is surge
protected, etc., upstream of the power strip.

Question: If I forget the computer is in Standby, rather than Shutdown,
what negative effects are there if I should turn the power strip off,
having forgotten the computer was in Standby rather than Shutdown?


--
Ken

Mac OS X 10.6.8
Firefox 3.6.17
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In
Ken said:
Scenario:

My XP Pro computer is running, and I shutdown the computer using the
Standby mode.

This computer is powered through a power strip, and the strip is surge
protected, etc., upstream of the power strip.

Question: If I forget the computer is in Standby, rather than
Shutdown, what negative effects are there if I should turn the power
strip off, having forgotten the computer was in Standby rather than
Shutdown?
Click to expand...

All writing that is cache is lost. Which sometimes is no big deal. And
Windows about one out of fifty times will corrupt itself. Which makes it
unbootable. I believe this condition occurs if Windows updates the
registry. And Windows is always writing to the registry zillions of
times per hour. Not all of this writing will corrupt the registry enough
to make Windows unbootable. But rarely it can.

You can save yourself a lot of problems if this does occur. Things like
using ERUNT (free), BartPE (free), restoring from a backup (sometimes
free), etc. System Restore sometimes works, but if Windows is unbootable
System Restore is pretty worthless.

I usually use hibernation instead of standby because of this. Although I
am using standby more and more. Although I also got into the habit of
looking at the standby light on the computer before I kill the power
strip. Once you get into that habit, I guess you don't have to worry
about making that mistake.

Others might add about using an UPS as a power source as well. As just
in case you lose power the UPS will keep supplying power so you don't
lose anything. Yes I do this as well.
 
In

All writing that is cache is lost. Which sometimes is no big deal. And
Windows about one out of fifty times will corrupt itself. Which makes it
unbootable. I believe this condition occurs if Windows updates the
registry. And Windows is always writing to the registry zillions of
times per hour. Not all of this writing will corrupt the registry enough
to make Windows unbootable. But rarely it can.

You can save yourself a lot of problems if this does occur. Things like
using ERUNT (free), BartPE (free), restoring from a backup (sometimes
free), etc. System Restore sometimes works, but if Windows is unbootable
System Restore is pretty worthless.

I usually use hibernation instead of standby because of this. Although I
am using standby more and more. Although I also got into the habit of
looking at the standby light on the computer before I kill the power
strip. Once you get into that habit, I guess you don't have to worry
about making that mistake.

Others might add about using an UPS as a power source as well. As just
in case you lose power the UPS will keep supplying power so you don't
lose anything. Yes I do this as well.
Click to expand...

Thanks, Bill,

I can easily live with all those possibilities. The computer is
certainly *not* my primary computer, as you can tell by my signature
below. :-) I basically only use it for fixing computers belonging to
my Windows owning friends, and truly very, very rarely for my own use.

I remember years ago, some hardware having problems getting XP out of
hibernation. I'm certain that by now, MS has solved that problem, but
I'm not too interested in testing it. LOL

As for power supply, that's not a big problem for me. My electricity is
not only one of the cheapest in the state, but one of the most reliable.
The industry goal in the state is for the average hourly outage per
customer per year is 5 hours, my supplier's average is around 2.8 hours
per customer per year.

When I get around to it, the next problem to solve with the computer is
the computer hangs when shutting down. :-)


--
Ken

Mac OS X 10.6.8
Firefox 3.6.17
Thunderbird 3.1.11
LibreOffice 3.3.2
 
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