How do you guys shut down your machine?

[2PacMan]

I'm to the point where i need to figure out how to shut down my computer once it's inside my cabinet.  I have a button that will turn it on from the cab....but how do i shut it down?  I can turn off the computer fine, but what about windows?

Don't i have to properly shut down windows through the start menu...i can't just cut the power, right??  I'm running windows XP, so the ctl+alt+del doesn't power down windows...any ideas??  I'm sure there's an easy way i'm just overlooking..

[grueinthebox]

This is posted to the wrong forum, but...

What front end are you using?  Using MAMEwah, you can actually map a button (or combination of buttons) to shut down windows.  I've just got mine setup as a really obscure button combination.

[Chris]

If you press the power button in XP on most recent motherboards, it sends a shutdown signal to the system, and if all running apps support that signal, the system will shut down cleanly.  MAMEWah will do this if you run it in the startup group, but if you run it as shell it will not.

--Chris

[nostrebor]

I have my Pause button mapped to shut down if I press it while in Mamewah. Changed the BIOS settings to power up automatically when electricity hits the power supply. Just hacked a remote toggle switch into a standard power strip cord. Easy, cheap, simple.

[TOK]

The rather cheap Foxcon motherboard in my machine has the option of shutting the machine down if it isn't used for a set period of time. Since it's plugged into the Smartstrip the whole thing shuts down after one hour.

[Rocky]

I double tap the power switch. This has been a way to cleanly shut down Windows since the beginning.

[Thenasty]

I just go in the back of the cabinet and flick the siwtch off.

[danny_galaga]

i use a macro to shut it down when i press red fire button and player two button simultaneously. if i used dos i would probably just turn it off at the switch...

[telengard]

I'm to the point where i need to figure out how to shut down my computer once it's inside my cabinet.  I have a button that will turn it on from the cab....but how do i shut it down?  I can turn off the computer fine, but what about windows?

Don't i have to properly shut down windows through the start menu...i can't just cut the power, right??  I'm running windows XP, so the ctl+alt+del doesn't power down windows...any ideas??  I'm sure there's an easy way i'm just overlooking..

I wrote a little frontend where one of the options is to 'restart windows'.  Be sure your BIOS is setup to allow it to come back up after power down.  My computer needed to have that option changed.

The script is here if you are looking for ideas:

http://users.adelphia.net/~bsturk/programs/cab_menu.py

~telengard

[AlanS17]

If you're using DOS, no shut down is required. You can simply cut the power safely (assuming you've made no in-game changes you'd like to keep).

Windows has to be properly shut down. I've completely crashed Windows computers before because they weren't shut down properly.

[benwillcox]

I have an arcade button on the back of my control panel wired to the PC where the power button normally connects to the motherboard. I fitted a relay to the power pass-thru port of my PSU so it only supplies power to that outlet when the computer is powered up, and my monitor, amplifier etc all plug into that.

So pressing the power button turns everything on.  I run Linux on my cab and pressing the power button just turns the computer (and monitor etc etc) straight off. I use the ext3 filesystem and have had NO problems with data corruption etc (although I never press the power button when there's disk activity, that's asking for trouble!). The main problem for me is it never saves any settings you make (like last selected game in the menu) when you turn off.

However with ACPI support compiled into the kernel, pressing the power button signals a system shutdown, so instead of just a hard poweroff it shuts the system down first then powers off. I'm recompliling my kernel as we speak to add ACPI support - better safe than sorry!

Cheers,
Ben