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question about shutting down Windows XP
BurgerKingDiamond:
I want to know wheter it's ok to just turn off my MAME computer without shutting down Windows XP first. I have a seperate ATX PSU with the pins jumped so that it turns on when I turn on the Power Strip that it's plugged into. This seperate PSU (when I first built the cab I had an extra and didn't feel like decasing my PC to use it's PSU) powers my marquee light, and coin lights. Now I want to trim down some of the components in my cab, so I want to get rid of the extra PSU, and decase the PC and use it's PSU to power marquee/coin lights in addition to PC itself. When I jump the certain pins to make the PSU come on when ever it's plugged into power, the PC will boot up, correct? When I want to shut eveything down I want to just turn off the Powerstrip so that everything turns off at once. Will it harm the PC to do this repeatedly without shutting down XP first?
ahofle:
Yes that's probably not a good idea. You can end up with a corrupt hard disk that way (if it happens to be in the middle of a write when you pull the plug). It's much safer to press the momentary power switch to safely shutdown windows, or use the start menu.
RayB:
Just to be clear, you can end up with corrupt DATA. It won't physically damage the harddrive, and the keyword "can" means there is a risk but most likely nothing will actually go bad.
What you could do is make a backup image of the drive, and then you don't have to care at all. If it corrupts and stops working, re-image with the backup and you're good to go again.
BadMouth:
Get a smart strip. It will shut off power to everything else after the computer shuts down completely.
Under power management, you can configure windows to shut down when the power button is pressed.
Not sure about other front ends, but Mala has the option to shut the pc down on exit.
mattmayhem:
I rewired the power switch to the motherboard to a pushbutton switch, and within windows I have mine setup to when I push the "power switch/pushbutton" it safely shuts down windows and turns the computer off. I also wired everything up to the PC power supply except the TV power button which I also added a pushbutton to control the power being on and off. The TV and PC both are always in standby mode with a very small amount of power going to them. The pushbutton just connects a 5v circuit that signals them that its time to power up. I suggest taking the 2 wires that lead to the pc power button and remotely wiring them to a pushbutton hidden somewhere on top the cab, its easy and a great solution.