Powerchute restarts (rather than shuts down) PC (Windows 7, 64 bit)

[robmeades_apc]

This was originally posted on APC forums on 3/3/2013

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Hi there.  I recently purchased a Back-UPS ES 550/700 to power my Windows 7 64 bit (HP-Z220 workstation) PC.  Yesterday, after a 24 hour charge, I connected it, and installed the very latest version of PowerChute Personal Edition.  So far so good.  The problems came when I tested that the PC shutdown would work (by switching off the mains supply). PowerChute popped up a box saying that it was going to hibernate the PC at about the correct time but then, after apparently shutting down, the PC immediately restarted.  This was a bit of a disaster as the battery was now pretty much dead and so the PC was de-powered through battery exhaustion in the middle of startup.

I noticed that I didn't have hibernate enabled on the Windows 7 installation on the PC so I uninstalled PowerChute Personal Edition, enabled hibernate, reinstalled PowerChute Personal Edition and tested the scenario again.  The same thing happened - my PC is restarted and not shutdown or hibernated by the PowerChute Personal Edition SW, even though that's what it says it's doing.  There aren't any options in the PowerChute software (at least, how it has chosen to install itself on my PC) to chose what kind of action is taken when the "shutdown" point is reached.

I've tried uninstalling PowerChute Personal Edition to use the Windows native controls instead but, though they were there before I installed PowerChute, they don't come back after I uninstall it.  So, my questions are:

1.  Please tell me how to make PowerChute Personal Edition do a proper shutdown or a proper hibernate of my PC, rather than a restart.

2.  If (1) is not possible, please tell me how to get the Windows native battery power controls back after uninstalling PowerChute Personal Edition.

FYI, I'm happy to edit registry entries or debug this/that in order to get things working.

Rob

[robmeades_apc]

This was originally posted on APC forums on 3/3/2013

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Hi there.  I recently purchased a Back-UPS ES 550/700 to power my Windows 7 64 bit (HP-Z220 workstation) PC.  Yesterday, after a 24 hour charge, I connected it, and installed the very latest version of PowerChute Personal Edition.  So far so good.  The problems came when I tested that the PC shutdown would work (by switching off the mains supply). PowerChute popped up a box saying that it was going to hibernate the PC at about the correct time but then, after apparently shutting down, the PC immediately restarted.  This was a bit of a disaster as the battery was now pretty much dead and so the PC was de-powered through battery exhaustion in the middle of startup.

I noticed that I didn't have hibernate enabled on the Windows 7 installation on the PC so I uninstalled PowerChute Personal Edition, enabled hibernate, reinstalled PowerChute Personal Edition and tested the scenario again.  The same thing happened - my PC is restarted and not shutdown or hibernated by the PowerChute Personal Edition SW, even though that's what it says it's doing.  There aren't any options in the PowerChute software (at least, how it has chosen to install itself on my PC) to chose what kind of action is taken when the "shutdown" point is reached.

I've tried uninstalling PowerChute Personal Edition to use the Windows native controls instead but, though they were there before I installed PowerChute, they don't come back after I uninstall it.  So, my questions are:

1.  Please tell me how to make PowerChute Personal Edition do a proper shutdown or a proper hibernate of my PC, rather than a restart.

2.  If (1) is not possible, please tell me how to get the Windows native battery power controls back after uninstalling PowerChute Personal Edition.

FYI, I'm happy to edit registry entries or debug this/that in order to get things working.

Rob

[robmeades_apc · Accepted solution]

This was originally posted on APC forums on 3/3/2013

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OK, I think I've sussed it.  The Mouse, Keyboard and Ethernet card were configured to permit them to wakeup up the system from sleep.  Since my system never usually sleeps (only if there's been a power failure) I disabled all three and it now stays shut-down when requested to do so.

Rob

[robmeades_apc]

This was originally posted on APC forums on 3/3/2013

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An update: I have managed to re-enable the Windows native battery power controls by doing a system restore to just before the PowerChute installation.  Having set these up to perform a hibernate when the battery reaches 50% (==critical) they too perform a system shutdown instead of a hibernate and my PC does the same thing: it powers back up within a few seconds.  I have verified that if I chose hibernate from the Windows power-off menu really does perform a hibernate.  Now I'm a bit stumped.  Any ideas what setting I have to fiddle with to:

a) make a critical battery level "hibernate" actually do a hibernate?

b) either that or keep my HP-Z220 workstation shut-down rather than have ti start up again?

Any help appreciated.

Rob

[BillP]

This reply was originally posted by Angela on APC forums on 3/4/2013

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so you're all set and decided to stick with Windows Native support? Thanks for sharing all of the steps you took to get to the root of the problem.

for any other issues regarding native or if anyone else stumbles upon this thread, one thing I was going to share was article FA159653 in our knowledge base @ www.apc.com/site/support/index.cfm/faq/ which outline setting up Windows Native support. We would've just maybe verified that was done correctly so that we could've narrowed down the issue to something else as you did robmeades.