One Silly Problem Solved

My new laptop computer would not turn off. Every time I turned it off, two minutes later it would recycle and turn back on again. At first I thought I had clicked on the wrong button, but I tried over and over again, and it still wouldn’t stay turned off. I asked a computer repairman what might be causing this problem and he said, “It could be one of several things, but it will be expensive to fix.” This was obviously not a place where I would want to take my beloved laptop.

My nephew laughed at me, saying that he keeps his computers running all the time. He never turns them off. Yes, but a laptop? That did not sound right to me, so I checked on line to see whether any of the geeks out there had anything to say about this. Oddly enough, computers that refuse to turn off are fairly common. It seems to happen a lot with Windows XP. Now, I have used this operating system almost since it first came out, and I have never seen or heard of that problem before.

One of he experts from Microsoft said that Windows XP needs to be updated to solve this problem. Someone else said that maybe something is running that you don’t know about. I talked with my programming wizard nephew and my geek son, and they both said I should take the battery out of the laptop when I want to turn it off. Neither one of them could see anything else to do with it.

I looked at all those alternatives and decided that I did not want to take my chances on an update from Microsoft, and I could not figure out what program might still be running, though I suspect it may have been one of the instant messenger programs. I did not want to open up the computer to try to figure out which piece inside it was the battery, so the advice from my son and nephew wasn’t very practical.

The silly thing stayed on all night even though I had turned it off at least a dozen times. The next morning, I looked at everything that was plugged into it, and thought about all those automatic updates and all the stories I’ve read about back doors being installed on our computers so that the government can keep track of what we do online, and I unplugged it from the internet. This time, when I turned the computer off, it stayed off until I turned it on again. Now, when I want to turn the computer off, I also unplug it from the Internet. It has worked fine ever since.