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        PC PowerDown after Shutdown in NT

Section(s): Logon, Shutdown
Published on Apr 20, 2004.
Last Modified on Apr 20, 2004.
Last Modified by Wayne Maples.
Rated 3.3 out of 5 based on 7 votes.

Win98 has a niffty feature where the PC powers down after a shutdown. This new capacity requires an ATX power supply. You can get similar functionality in Windows NT by applying the following Windows NT registry hack:

Hive: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
Key: Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon
Name: PowerdownAfterShutdown
Type: REG_SZ
Value: 1 Enable power off after shutdown

After this, the shutdown dialog should be Shutdown and Power Off.

If you make the registry change and the PC reboots instead of powering down, you can often get it to work by upgrading your hal.dll with the Softex dll which shipped with SP4.

cd %systemroot%\system32

ren hal.dll hal.dll.original

copy cd_drive\i386\hal.dll.softex hal.dll

If this does not work, and your PC just reboots, check with the vendor of your PC and see if they have a powerdown BIOS and hal.dll. It may be, that you do not have an ATX power supply. Newer PCs do, but ...