Windows – Cancelling Window 7 shutdown disables power button

shutdownwindows 7

Normally, pressing the power button once initiates a shut-down in Windows 7.

If any programs are still running that will not quit (e.g. waiting for a dialogue response), Windows overlays the screen with a dialogue allowing the user to cancel the shut-down.

I've just noticed that on two different systems here, using this cancel option disables the shut-down via power button. The power button can still be used to kill the system by holding it for a few seconds, using the Start menu button to shut the PC down still works as well.

Steps to reproduce:

  1. Open Notepad, type a few characters. Do not save.
  2. Press the computer's power button.
  3. Wait until the dark screen appears.
  4. Press cancel.
  5. Press the power button again. Notice how nothing happens.

What is the reason for this behaviour, and can it be disabled to always try and shut down the PC when the power button is pressed?

Best Answer

This is a known issue: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2719667/en-us?sd=rss&spid=14498 (funny enough I just happened to see it show up recently in the knowledge base RSS feed)

If an application is preventing Windows from shutting down (ex. unsaved work), Windows will wait a period of 60 seconds at the force shut down dialog before forcing the application to close so shut down can continue. If the user cancels out of the force shutdown dialog, Windows still retains the 60 second timeout value. As a result, the next time a shut down occurs, even if there are no blocking applications, shut down will be delayed until the timeout value expires.

This behavior only occurs when configuring the power button to shut down the machine. When shutting down Windows through the Start Menu, the problem does not occur as the timeout value is not retained when cancelling out of the forced shutdown dialog.

Unfortunately the work-around is:

To work around this issue, use the shut down option from the Windows Start Menu instead.

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