Problem with shut down when power went out

[ex_hacker202_apc]

I have an HP Pavilion desktop PC running Vista SP1, APC ES-600G UPS, and APC PowerChute PE 3.0.2. Yesterday the power went out at my house and stayed out - hasn't happened in over 10 yrs, so I knew this was a major problem. PC and peripherals were running on the UPS, but I decided to manually shut down the PC in case there was a major power surge when power was restored - the shut down process took a very long time (usually only takes 10-15 seconds), which immediately concerned me, then the PC hung at the "logging off" screen - very bad! After waiting for minutes and noticing that something was writing to the HD on a steady time interval, I bit the bullet and did a hard power off with the power button on the PC. When utility power was restored I got the message that "the computer did not shut down properly" and "would I like to restart the computer normally or in safe mode?" mentioned in this thread:

http://forums.apc.com/spaces/4/back-ups-surge-protectors/forums/general/2475/windows-did-not-shutdow...

After reading that entire thread, it hinged on various hibernation modes of both Windows and the APC UPS, but my PC is set up to never hibernate or sleep - only power conservation mode is for the monitor. I am very suspicious that the PC would not shut down because PowerChute was continuing to write to it's log file monitoring the power outage. I was able to successfully reboot the computer normally, but it's disturbing that the PowerChute software may not have shut itself down when I manually tried to shut down the PC while power was out - is this a bug? I had the APC software set up to shut down the PC with 5 minutes of battery power left, have changed that to shut down the PC when line power is out for 1 minute or more, but I'm hesitant to run a test now, not knowing what's going to actually happen - I cannot afford to have the HD get corrupted or trashed if something is trying to write to it the split second shutdown actually occurs.

All ideas and comments welcomed, TIA for any help and advice.

[BillP · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Sorry for the inconvenience. When you install PowerChute Personal Edition the installer enables hibernation on the system. It does not install the hibernation feature. That feature is included in the Windows OS. If you would like to disable hibernation  open a command prompt as an administrator and enter powercfg.exe /hibernate off

If you are not comfortable with PowerChute Personal Edition you have other options. You can configure the native power options that you will find in the control panel to power down the system. You will find instruction in Schneider Electric FAQ FA159653. If you are going to use the system power options you may need to review Schneider Electric FAQ FA159743 to enable HID USB driver on the system.

Another option is to install APCUPSD. I have not tested the latest version of APCUPSD on Vista but my gut felling is it will work. 

[ex_hacker202_apc]

Links to MS Help listed at this link:

http://www.apc.com/us/en/faqs/FA159653/

Are no longer valid since MS ended support for Vista - suggest you remove or modify that page.

Also, I downloaded the PDF from that page:

http://www2.schneider-electric.com/resources/sites/SCHNEIDER_ELECTRIC/content/live/FAQS/159000/FA159...

And verified that the drivers listed on pgs 4 and 5 are present, but "on battery" icon shown on pg 8 is not present in Control Panel/Power/Options and the Taskbar "Power" icon selection is greyed out - Vista apparently doesn't know it's on a battery despite the fact that the APC drivers are present, valid, and working.

I downloaded apcupsd-3.14.14 - do I install it over top of PowerChute or do I have to uninstall PowerChute first and disable the existing 2 APC drivers in Device Manager?

[BillP]

Hi,

You should uninstall PowerChute and then if you would like to utilize the setting in the power option you should follow the instruction in FAQ FA159743 and switch the APC UPS driver to HID USB driver. Once the HID USB driver is loaded the battery settings will be available in Vista. 

If you are going to install APCUPSD you should first uninstall PowerChute and then install APCUPSD. You will also need to install the ACPUPSD USB driver. Instruction for installing ACPUPSD driver are provided in the APCUPSD download. 

I created a video some time ago for another forum member that shows how to install ACPUPSD and the USB driver. Here is a link to the video.

https://schneider-electric.box.com/s/ov3x1m7xt9spwndvq0jzwkrxuawd6epb It is slightly grainy but does explain the steps needed.

[ex_hacker202_apc]

Thanks for the link to "Missing on battery options in Windows 7 Vista or 2008.pdf" - I think that will resolve my problem. Sorta dumb question, but what is the point of the APC Powerchute software, the shutdown options etc., if they don't actually work, meaning the software does not actually turn the PC off completely? Knowing that I've gone several years w/o actual total power outage protection is not exactly comforting....if the battery ran out of juice while stuck in that odd "hibernate" or "logging off" state and the hard drive was being written to it could have damaged the head.....

[BillP]

Hi,

PowerChute does work. I cannot explain what may have happened when you powered down the system. I made the recommendation to change shutdown method because you stated you were hesitant to run a test. The only way to troubleshoot an issue is to test and since you indicated you did not want to do so I felt the best option was to make a change.