Alienware 18 will not fully shut down

Just got a new AW 18 in December. Several times now, it has not fully shut down. When I initiate the shut down process, the screen witll go blank, the mouse will shut down, but the keyboard and lights on the main chassis will stay lit and the cooling fans keep going. I am forced to hold down the power button to get it to turn off.

On at least 3 occasions, it laughs at me when I try to shut it down. When I initiate the shut down process, the screen will blink and it goes right back to the desktop as if I had done nothing. I am forced to hold down the power button to shut it down.

Dell, what's up with your flagship gaming product? How do I fix it?

 

BIOS version?>

 

I will check when I get home shortly, but if memory serves me correctly, it is the latest version (A10) as I got this only in December and A10 was released in October.

 

Something is hanging up in memory or you may have EC support enabled with HWiNFO64 (if you are using that, that is one of the glitches that EC support can cause). It is most likely software related. It could even be a goofed up Windows Update causing this. Windows 7 or Windows 8?

 

I confirmed that I have BIOS version A10. I am using Win 8.1. I am not using HWiNFO64. Should I be? If so, what version. 32/64 or Native 64?

 

Try reflashing BIOS perhaps?

 

Not the solution.

 

Has your pc been doing this straight out of the box, or after you added a program? Try re-install windows, if that does not work call Dell have them do a remote diagnostic. If all this fails maybe send it back if your within your 30 days of getting it.

 

Have you tried it?

 

It has done it basically a week after I got it. The only applications I added were MS office, Google Chrome and a game. Nothing that should make it refuse to shut down. I will just call Dell as it seems everyone here is just guessing.

 

OR, nothing is wrong with his memory, he might simply have Windows 8.1 installed, this happened to me so many times while using Windows 8.1 with latest updates.

Not always, but randomly.....

just a though...

 

I do have 8.1 installed.

 

No, I was not saying something was wrong with his memory as in RAM modules, only that something was possibly getting hung up in memory (software or malware).

None of those programs installed aftermarket should have caused it, but one of them may have. I would try using System Restore and roll back to the oldest restore point available and see if the problem persists, or use Windows "Refresh" or whatever 8.1 calls that crap. Disable Automatic Windows Updates once the problem is resolved. Install them manually, in small batches with a System Restore manually created between updates so you can undo things more easily.

HWiNFO64 is awesome. I use the portable version. I would avoid adding any new software until you get this issues resolved.

Silly questions, but I will ask in case you have not checked: (a) Does it refuse to shut down on battery the same AC power? (b) Does it behave the same if you disconnect your network connection before attempting to shut down, or does it shut down correctly with no active network connection? (c) Does it behave the same attempting to shut down using the physical power button versus Windows Shutdown option? (Your Windows power profile would need to be configured to shut down instead of sleep when pressing the power button.)

 

That's your problem bro, that's one of the reasons that I upgrade to Windows 7.....

and this issue......the mysterious error upon shutdown or restart for a split second that you may have also seen but never bothered to investigate further, it's on all computers in my household that have Windows 8.1:

Do you get an error upon every restart in 8.1?

 

Not sure if I should put this here or have started a new thread but my 18 is now doing the same thing. I have not run any updates or changed my method of shutting down. The only thing I did was hard wire it to the internet and download and install a few games from Steam. Now I am back to wireless and when I try to shut down, the power light stays on and the fans are still running low. However it seems like once I close the lid it is shut down because when I go back to it and power up, it is loading all programs again. Any thoughts?

 

You may be having an issue with sleep states and/or hibernation. Both features cause weird problems. Tell your power profile to not do anything to sleep or save power, set the lid behavior to "Do Nothing" when closing the lid, avoid using sleep and disable the ability to use hibernation. That may resolve your issues.

Open an administrator command prompt, type powercfg –h off and hit enter. This will disable hibernation.

If those suggestions do not fix the problem, you may have a driver or software issue that is causing the behavior you are experiencing.

 

Thx for the response. Figured I am going to check into things 1 at a time when I get home starting with shutting down programs like HWINFO and then checking active processes. But if I am shutting down every time anyway, I guess I can just stop sleep/hibernate settings since I am not using them anyway. I used to always just shut the lid and let it hibernate, started shutting down when I installed the modded 344.75.

 

I just wanted to follow up here incase anyone having this issue comes across this thread. Once again it was a driver issue. I forgot I had slow boot once before that started out of nowhere. DDU'd the driver and reinstalled and everything was back to normal. Same thing this time.

This has happened 3 times to me so far. Twice it has caused boot/shutdown issues and the other time it cause Nvidia control panel to not apply changes. Only seems to happen when running the modded drivers. In addition, it does not happen after installing the drivers, they are fine until the next game is installed and then something seems to get thrown off. A simple driver uninstall with DDU and a reinstall fixes it.

 

Do you guys have alot of stuff plugged into USB ports when it hangs / refuses to shut down?

 

mouse dongle and sometimes a controller. However, I have attempted to do it with everything unplugged including the HDMI cable. No difference. The driver uninstall and reinstall is the only thing that corrects it without having to change power, sleep or hibernation settings.