"Derek Hans" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Is it normal that my power button doesn't work? > After running shutdown -h now, the system shuts down and issues a > message saying > "Power down." > However, when I hit the power button, the computer just beeps but > still stays on. The only thing I can then do is a VERY hard reset: > take out the batteries (it's a laptop, compaq contura 400c) and unplug > it. Nothing else responds. This doesn't seem to be the normal way to > shut off a computer. Just wondering if there is a different way... > For the moment, I'm just letting it running all the time, however > there doesn't seem to be a "power saving mode" activated > automatically, and so the screen stays on all day. Besides, it gets > rather hot over time - I'm not quite sure if the fan is adequate for > this. I'm not decided if it's worse for the computer to shut it off > the "HARD" way or keeping it running all day & night. > Help would be apreciated.
A couple of things... First, please don't start a new thread by replying to a message on an old thread. To me it looked like your message was a part of the thread entitled "wajig: a simple command line interface to Debian package mgmt". This is because a lot of email/news readers are threaded and arrange articles by their subject. If you start a new thread by replying to an existing article your article may be overlooked, or annoy people who started the original thread. Second, as someone else stated in a reply to you, you may need to recompile your kernel with APM support, and if that doesn't work I think there's an APM option to use real-mode to power off. Third, a lot of laptops don't use a real switch for power off. Instead it's a soft switch. In general, if the machine doesn't shut itself off you may need to hold the power button down for as much as 8 seconds to actually get it to turn off. Even that may not work, but 9 times out of 10 it has worked for me. Good Luck! Gary
