Odd shutdown behavior

[Jerry]

Last night something started happening on shutdown that I have not seen in
Vector SOHO 5.8 since I installed it:  when I shut it down it got to a point in
the text scrolling by where it said, "power down," and stopped there instead
of turning the machine off as usual.

The oddest thing is that the power button did nothing.  I ended up having
to remove the battery. 

I have been fiddling with the suspend and standby settings in power control,
so I tried resetting it back to the defaults there.  But the behavior continues.

It's not a huge deal, but I would like to learn how to control that aspect of
the shutdown sequence, and also I'd like to learn why it has started behaving
this way.

PCLinuxOS used to do this on my pc (not this Acer Aspire 5610z laptop) and
I never did learn how to cause the shutdown sequence to automatically turn
off the machine.

Help would be appreciated.

  - Jerry

[Joe1962]

The oddest thing is that the power button did nothing.  I ended up having
to remove the battery. 

This leads me to suspect a hardware or BIOS config issue.

[Jerry]

Thanks, Joe.

Hey, I have a sneakin' suspicion it's from overheating.  I was using the laptop in a way
that one should not use a laptop:  sitting on a pillow on my lap.  I put the pillow there
to get the keyboard up a little higher for comfort while I was in my chair in front of
the TV. 

The hard drive and memory chamber heat up big time when there's no way for the
heat to dissipate other than the small vents on the side and back.  Also the fan
was not able to blow heat out of the bottom. 

I am not going to put the machine through that again just to test and see if it
overheats, but Vector is behaving normally now on shut down as I use it the way it's
meant to be used:  sitting on its little feet with plenty of ventilation room down there.

  -- Jerry

[GrannyGeek]

Hey, I have a sneakin' suspicion it's from overheating.  I was using the laptop in a way
that one should not use a laptop:  sitting on a pillow on my lap.  I put the pillow there
to get the keyboard up a little higher for comfort while I was in my chair in front of
the TV. 

Look around for an inexpensive lap desk. I found one for less than ten dollars US at a drug store that sells lots of other merchandise. My lap desk has a pillow covered by a hard plastic surface on the top. This raises the laptop a couple of inches and the plastic surface lets the laptop sit on it so that there is air space under the laptop and the fans are not blocked.

I use my laptop on the lap desk for several hours every evening while I sit in a rocking chair with my feet up and do my e-mail, forums, and Web browsing.
--GrannyGeek

[Jerry]

"lap desk"

Heading for google now.   

[GrannyGeek]

A lap desk is just a small thing with a hard surface that you can put in your lap and use for writing letters, holding plates with food, holding notepads so you can write in them, or holding your laptop. Many of them have a soft pillow attached to the underside of the hard surface so it'll be steady in your lap.
--GrannyGeek

[Jerry]

Yeah, I've used those from time to time.. most notably to serve breakfast in bed to
my wife (birthdays, aniversaries, mood elevator times..  )..  but I see in google
many specialized lap desks for laptop computers, some with cooling fans, etc..  woohooo..