The PC that wouldn’t shut down

Time for another spooky IT-related story.

A friend of mine decided to try the sleep button on her keyboard.

Something weird happened at this point which I could not remember, all I know is from this point on, her PC wouldn’t shut down after selecting the shutdown button on Windows 7.

It would shutdown and after 1-2 seconds, boot up again by itself. Only way to shut it down is to press and hold the power button, but no one should have to do this to shut down their computer.

I got her to install remote software for me to login and check her power settings. Everything seemed fine. Even tried resetting BIOS settings to factory defaults.

It just so happened that we were planning a lan party at another friend’s place so I got her to bring down her computer so I can check after the games.

Since there’s nothing else to try on Windows, and even resetting the BIOS didn’t help, I first tried reinstalling the OS.

Didn’t fix the problem.

By now, it’s already 7am and it’s starting to get bright outdoors and I’ve run out of ideas.

All I could do is stare at the motherboard.

My eyes looked around, admiring the circuit patterns and electronic components.

Then my gaze fell upon the motherboard’s CR2032 battery.

*takes out battery, set my alarm to ring in 15 minutes, nap*

*alarm rings, puts in battery, boots up computer*

Shutting down…

Shuts down…

Silence…

2 seconds passed….

5 seconds passed…

10 seconds passed…

Fixed!

Since the battery is used by motherboards to save configuration settings, my guess is the sleep signal on the keyboard triggered something on the motherboard, which by only taking out the battery, will force it to forget all settings.