Malcolm McLeary Posted March 5, 2002 Report Share Posted March 5, 2002 Hi Guys, I have just installed Retrospect 5.6 on a new IBM NetVista running Windows XP Professional. The client wants the machine shutdown at night so I set Retrospect to do its thing after COB and to Shutdown when done. The problem is that it isn't. Windows XP will cause the machine to power down when its asked to shutdown, but Retrospect leaves the machine running with a screen saying that it is now safe to turn the computer off. This happens if a user is logged on and when the user is logged off. I understand that some legacy hardware can't be powered down but this machine can and Windows XP can does it. Observing the behaviour Retrospect appears to instruct Windows to shutdown, as the same screens are displayed, but it doesn't. I have other non Windows XP systems shutting down correctly, but this is my first installation on this hardware with Windows XP. Is this an issue with Windows XP? Cheers, Malcolm Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lv2ski Posted April 4, 2002 Report Share Posted April 4, 2002 Retrospect for Windows cannot shut down PC Client computers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Malcolm McLeary Posted April 4, 2002 Author Report Share Posted April 4, 2002 My use of the term "client" in this case means "customer" or "user" ... I'm not using Retrospect Client ... I'm running Retrospect 5.6 on the XP machine itself. Retrospect performs its backup duties and is then set to shutdown the PC. It sort of does it ... it just leaves the PC with a screen indicating to the user that its now safe to turn the computer off. This works fine on earlier version of Windows ... this is my first XP installation and I wouldn't be surprised to find that changed something. Retrospect can shutdown the computer on which it is running, and I've had it working fine until XP. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lv2ski Posted April 4, 2002 Report Share Posted April 4, 2002 I see what you mean. I am sorry for the misunderstandings. There are some machines that Retrospect cannot fully shut down. This may be one of them. Alot of PCs must be turned off with a hardware switch. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Malcolm McLeary Posted April 4, 2002 Author Report Share Posted April 4, 2002 Yes, lots of legacy PCs do not have soft power switches and need the user to power them down, but this is a brand new IBM P4 ... XP can shut the thing down, I don't understand why Retrospect can't. It appears to me that Microsoft have changed the entry point for XP to shutdown and didn't advise Dantz. So Dantz call the old routine which only does half the job. This level of detail is out of my pay scale ... all I know is that the PC supports software shutdown and Retrospect isn't doing it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lv2ski Posted April 5, 2002 Report Share Posted April 5, 2002 I have made this a suggestion: the PC supports software shutdown and Retrospect isn't doing it. - so the suggestion is better shutdown support for PCs. Thank you for your feed back! Melissa Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Malcolm McLeary Posted April 5, 2002 Author Report Share Posted April 5, 2002 In most situations I run a "Backup Server" which stays running 24 x7, but I have two client sites where they insist on the hardware being turned off at night. In each of these cases its the "Reception" machine which has the data and performs backups of itself. The hardware is quite different, but the Win98 machine does power down when instructed by Retrospect ... the "newer" XP machine does not. In each case the OS is able to power down the hardware. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Malcolm McLeary Posted April 8, 2002 Author Report Share Posted April 8, 2002 I've found the time to try this on my Gateway PIII which is running W2K. W2K is able to power down the hardware but when Retrospect tries it leaves the machine running with a dialog saying that its now safe to power down the computer. Also I've just installed the latest Iomega drivers. After the install the installer wanted to shutdown my machine ... it did so, but didn't power it down. It resulted in the same "its now safe to power down the computer" dialog. This leads me to believe that there is a shutdown system call which Microsoft uses and another it tells developers about. One does a power down, the other doesn't. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jsepeta Posted April 15, 2002 Report Share Posted April 15, 2002 I've got 4 pc's at my desk, and they're running the following: XP pro, win2k pro, win2k server, win98se; the various versions of MS OS have been loaded on all the different models at some time or another. They're all different models: 1ghz athlon clone, compaq 566mhz celeron, 400mhz K62 clone, 450mhz K6-III clone. Shutdowns work based on the logic board support for shut down and the microsoft code. for instance, winxp and win2k seem to shut down just fine. win98 does a shut down on some, but not on others. WinNT _never_ shut down. I think you're on the right track -- Microsoft probably changed their shutdown code when moving to XP. But my guess is it's not too different from Windows 2000. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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