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May I know if it is recommended to shutdown the power plug when Windows display "Shutting Down..." (or sort of) message?

Sometime, when you click the "Shut Down" button, the computer seems to waiting for "something" behind to end or doing "something" behind and usually may take quite long before it shut down by itself. Also, from my understanding, it is better wait for the computer to shut down by itself before switch off the power plug - so that there will be no hard disk crash (or sort of). Do correct me if I misunderstand.

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  • The answers here also provide some useful information. superuser.com/q/103861/24500
    – surfasb
    Commented Oct 31, 2011 at 9:17
  • @surfasb. Thanks for the information - appreciate your comment (even though the link mention was on power button of the computer and not the one that I mention - the power plug.)
    – Larry Morries
    Commented Nov 1, 2011 at 1:30

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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You should never turn the computer off by the plug, until it has safely shut down (e.g. turns itself off on modern systems).

The only time to do the plug or hold down the button is when you are certain it has frozen (e.g. mouse will not move, or everything is still for 20+ minutes).

It is never a good idea to force the computer off, at shutdown it can take a while because all services/programs that run in the background will be shutting down.

In addition, at shutdown is when updates are performed (if you have any pending). If you shutdown during one of these, and it was a critical one, your computer (since Vista) can usually recover, but, it may take a while.

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  • I noticed the same thing on my work laptop, when I had to turn it off by holding the power button for 5 secs during "Shutting down...". It actually corrupted something in the hard drive, and the HDD had to be recovered to work again!
    – Juha Untinen
    Commented Aug 28, 2013 at 16:27

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