9 ms·
Why is there a screen that says "It is now safe to turn off your computer"? (2016)
- gnabgib 2y ago(2016) Discussion at the time (99 points, 44 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11527671 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11527671
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- accrual 2y agoThese shutdown splashes are one reason why I enjoy working with AT motherboards, those with the old P8 + P9 power connector ("red to red and it's dead"). There's some charm and nostalgia in the computer only having two states - on and off. No standby power, no S1-S4 states, no wake-on-LAN, no management engine, etc. Press the power button - hopefully a chunky rocker switch - and the system is off (minus the RTC battery). I have an XP machine running on such a motherboard and it too supports the "safe to shutdown" splash. Hibernate also works, so if I really want to, I can put it to "sleep" with no power at all.
- wolrah 2y ago> Press the power button - hopefully a chunky rocker switch - and the system is off (minus the RTC battery). My favorite part of this era were those under-monitor power switch gadgets, so you could just leave the AT power switch on as well as the printer, monitor, modem, etc. and have one master power switch that turned everything on or off. I still have an early '90s IBM PS/1 that was my family's first computer. The only accessories that survived from then are the CH Flightstick and Gravis Gamepad, the original keyboard, mouse, and monitor are long gone (I really regret not having the wonderful original clacky IBM keyboard), but it still works and still boots off its original 129MB hard drive. If I find one of those power switch things at Goodwill or whatever I'll pick it up without a second thought.
- olyjohn 2y agoSeems like it was inevitable that the lights in each switch would end up flickering and driving me insane or completely burning out.
- wolrah 2y agoIn hindsight, that almost certainly answers something kid me always wondered about. My grandparents' computer desk had the ceiling-mounted track lights on their switch box's "Aux 2" switch with nothing on "Aux 1". If I recall correctly Aux 1 did in fact flicker, so that very likely is the reason the lights were on aux 2.
- dist-epoch 2y ago> hopefully a chunky rocker switch Because wall-power was routed through that switch, quite dangerously, the cable could get pinched in the case.
- userbinator 2y agoThe switch was part of the PSU: https://cdn11.bigcommerce.com/s-a1x7hg2jgk/images/stencil/1280x1280/products/34257/404225/IBM-6181000-Power-Supply-200W-IBM-5170_180622__63334.1708306772.jpg?c=2?imbypass=on https://cdn11.bigcommerce.com/s-a1x7hg2jgk/images/stencil/12...
- anoldperson 2y agoNah, he's talking about these: https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.electromyne.com%2Fimages%2Flarge%2F130807a.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=09dce69f91a9f846bcbe201fb908e2828a16765f8a05f30ad666087bc3ea76a1&ipo=images https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F...
- SpaghettiCthulu 2y agoThat url just gives me "Bad request."
- accrual 2y agoIt loaded for me, but here's a description for future readers. The first image is the of the original IBM PC's power supply (or a clone) wherein there's a nice, clunky red switch directly on the power supply. The second image is of a later AT style power supply where the switch was moved to the front of the chassis/facade. To facilitate this, it runs a pair of wires carrying mains power to the front of the case, which the switch (usually clunky, due to the current) physically toggles mains power into the motherboard.
- userbinator 2y ago
- jwineinger 2y agoMay I ask why you still have an XP machine running?
- capitainenemo 2y agoNo idea why they are doing it, but I can say that on upgrading an old Windows machine, I discovered their financial software was completely non-functional and no windows emulation mode on the executable would work. I ended up running it in virtualbox in "seamless" mode in ubuntu+wine set to autolaunch the software... plus a windows share. For some reason that worked with no issues. The alternative would have been purchasing a half dozen upgrades and going through them one by one, with repeated database upgrades, for software that was working fine. Probably not too much risk if the XP machine is isolated. There could also be licensing issues with upgrading, as well as unmaintained proprietary software.
- Legend2440 2y agoI once worked at a job that had a couple dusty old Windows 98 machines, because it was the last version of Windows supported by the control software for their expensive machine.
- HeyLaughingBoy 2y agoThere are a lot more of those out there than people realize.
- accrual 2y agoSure! I mostly use it for testing and finding the latest versions of software that still run without requiring SSE2 instructions (Athlon64, Pentium 4, etc.). It's kind of like a functioning software museum - it has lots of old software and editors I used in the XP days, some games from around 2001, and some programming tools like Visual Studio/Basic, Perl, Python, Mingw/GitBash, Sublime Text, Ruby, etc. The only lang I haven't been able to run so far is NodeJS since it required SSE2 instructions very early on. It has a 1300MHz Pentium 3 and 384MB of RAM, but with a PCI SATA controller and a modern SSD, it's pretty speedy and capable!
- 1970-01-01 2y agoI wonder if one forcefully disables all ACPI support and drivers, are they allowed to go back to the binary ON/OFF lifestyle on a modern x86 system? What does Windows do?
- accrual 2y agoI think so - but it would be fun to confirm. Windows up to and including XP still have the AT shutdown splash baked in. I think the splash was dropped with Vista. I did successfully boot Vista on a real AT-style motherboard but I don't recall how the shutdown looked. One can install Windows 98 without ACPI by running setup with the "/pi" switch, alternative one can uninstall the "ACPI PC" device and replace it with "Standard PC" which should disable ACPI. This should cause it to show the shutdown splash even on ATX systems.
- userbinator 2y agoYes. The message is changed slightly, but this is what happens: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUt1MXelR9w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUt1MXelR9w
- accrual 2y agoWow, that's cool to see on Windows 11. Thanks for finding & sharing this.
- m348e912 2y agoThe issue I have is the wording. The problem really comes down to the fact that windows couldn't actually power off the computer like it can today. I think the message should have said: "Windows shutdown complete. Please power off the computer." This more clearly implies that not only is it safe to turn off your computer, it's recommended you do so.
- dist-epoch 2y ago> Please power off the computer. Sounds a bit like ordering the user, I guess that's why they went with the other message.
- advisedwang 2y agoThis message helps reinforce that shutting down the computer before seeing that message was NOT safe.
- fluoridation 2y agoBut if you didn't know that you wouldn't have seen that message, because you'd be powering it off every time.
- marcosdumay 2y agoOh, Windows would tell you quite clearly that you did something wrong the next time you turned the computer on.
- jolmg 2y agos/shutting down/powering off/
- bombcar 2y agoRemember that it's an all-black screen that came on after a blue cloud screen with "Please wait while your computer shuts down".
- davidt84 2y ago
- xg15 2y agoSemi-OT, but is there still any situation in modern computers where turning it off would be "unsafe"? I.e. if you yanked the power cord at some specific time, the system would take irreversible damage? Was this actually a real danger at all at some point? It's obvious that cutting the power without shutdown will lead to data loss of everything not written to persistent storage. But for old PCs, the warning was always that it could also physically damage the PC, e.g. damage the hard drives or something like that. Is this still the case?
- BugsJustFindMe 2y ago> But for old PCs, the warning was always that it could also physically damage the PC I don't remember this being true. I remember it always being about data loss.
- dist-epoch 2y agoOlder hard-drives didn't automatically park the head on power loss, leaving it in a dangerous position above the platters. Any shock would smack it into the platters.
- SoftTalker 2y agoMy first hard drive came with a utility program to park the heads. Was recommended to run it before powering off
- _carbyau_ 2y agoWe had an Apricot that I had to type "park" on before turning off.
- BugsJustFindMe 2y agoHuh, now that you mention it, I do think I remember something like that now. Thanks for joggin the noggin.
- smitelli 2y ago
- ryandrake 2y agoYes, I know about disk caches and data corruption and blah blah blah. But to me, it's yet another condescending reminder of who's actually in charge of the computer (hint: It's not the user, like it was in the days of yore). You don't just turn off your computer anymore. No, that would put the user too much in control. Now you request to the operating system: "Pretty please, with sugar on top, if you're not too terribly busy doing whatever it is you're doing, would you mind powering off?" The computer has its own agenda and agency, and increasingly the user's wishes are unimportant. We've been conditioned to ask the computer to do things rather than command it.
- dullcrisp 2y agoThis is why I alias kill to kill -9 on all my systems.
- gapan 2y agoI don't think it has anything to do with the "good old times". It is a problem that's introduced as soon as a storage medium is used. Sure, you could shutdown your C64 anytime, but even then, if you did it while it was writing to the tape/floppy, then your data was lost. And I definitely remember having to park the hard drive on an XT before shutting it down.
- kragen 2y agoIt's a good reminder that the days of yore were mostly actually pretty terrible for user control, because we're talking about a problem that currently popular computers like this cellphone and any Linux box with ext4fs no longer have. And of course before the move to Microsoft Windows around 01991 an awful lot of people were using minicomputers and mainframes they not only weren't allowed to turn off, but often weren't even allowed to see at all. A lot like AWS.
- dlcarrier 2y agoIn the 80's, when you were in charge of your computer, if you had a hard drive and didn't park it before shutting off power, not only could you lose anything cached but not written, but you could damage the drive itself, lose all of the contents.
- 1970-01-01 2y ago>This message was displayed when shutdown was complete and the computer did not support software-initiated power-off. It told the user, “Okay, shutdown is complete. It’s okay. You can hit the power button now. I won’t get mad; I promise.” That's a somewhat unsatisfactory answer, or more of a software-minded answer. The full answer: Because ATX power was a NEW thing. AT motherboards and power supplies were overwhelmingly still in-use. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PS-ON_Signal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PS-ON_Signal
- Joker_vD 2y ago> And back in the day, most computers fell into the second category. Power management was one of those newfangled thingies that only the fancy-pants computers supported.
- 1970-01-01 2y agoPS-ON and ACPI states are different things. You could fully shutdown an ATX system without ACPI 1.0 https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/204205/what-is-required-to-activate-the-ps-on-on-the-motherboard-to-power-on-a-compu https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/204205/what-...
- torginus 2y agoThat Restart button debacle really spoke to me. There's really this weird bug in human nature, when if people are presented with an action, they cannot help themselves but want to take it, even when they know doing so could be actively detrimental or at best neutral (Click that button, sign this paper). I myself have noticed doing this (and others manipulating me into doing this!), and I'm trying my best not to act on this impulse.
- andix 2y agoSome people think UX designers are useless. But they know that kind of stuff and how to make it right. (Let's not get into the discussion that a lot of graphics designers call themselves UX experts, without actually knowing UX stuff).
- NoPicklez 2y agoVery random anecdote, I've noticed when Facebook asks you to validate your login it presents you with two buttons one is "This is me" or "This is not me". The interface has "This is not me" coloured and the "This is me" not coloured and just the same shade as the webpage. My brain automatically starts to move my cursor to the "This is not me" box because it is the standout button. Which is a really good behavioral security experience because my mind was pushed towards the safer option.
- hulitu 2y ago> Some people think UX designers are useless. The only "eXperience"s in X are pain, frustration and masochism, regardless if it's on Windows, Android or iOS.
- KoolKat23 2y agoAnd nowadays Windows simply just doesn't shut down. Honestly 80% of the time on both my wife and my work computers, the shutdown process encounters some error and just stays on.
- andix 2y agoFor all the younger people I think it's important to know, that before Windows 95 the concept of "shutting down" a computer was mostly unknown. DOS never had an option to shut down, you just saved your work and turned off the computer. Also with Windows 3.x it was normal to just switch the PC off, without any prior shut down process. Back in the days most software was synchronous, there were no background processes, no write cache (and read cache was optional). Once the "saving document" message was gone, it was written to disk. With floppys and early hard drives it was easy to hear anyway, when the noise stopped it was written to disk.
- pzh 2y agoEven in the DOS days, you still had to park the drive heads before shutting down. DOS even had a PARK command for that.
- andix 2y agoTrue, that was a good idea with some early hard drives, but only required if the PC was moved. In that period hard drives were a luxury, many pcs just had two floppy drives. One for the operating system and applications, the second one for data.
- userbinator 2y agoOnly on early hard drives that used stepper motor actuators.
- anonzzzies 2y ago...but most people got their systems from their job in those days and so wouldn't get told this little tidbit for obvious reasons; You Must Park Before Swithing Off. I did get unlucky somewhere begin 80s when my father brought home a luggable, I didn't park, he lugged it back and the hd was damaged.
- marcosdumay 2y agoYes, the GP is a more recent advancement. Before that, you had to set the hardware for turning off. There was a brief moment when the hardware was advanced enough to reach a safe configuration by itself, and the software was not advanced enough to need to synchronize state with everything. But maybe there's a lesson there, and the software should be able to shut itself down in a couple of seconds in the background, just like the hardware did.
- rkagerer 2y agoIn theory, because of unflushed cache.
- amelius 2y agoWhy is there a message saying "it's now safe to remove your USB drive"?
- throaway920181 2y agoBecause write through caches make lies out of the best operating systems.
- userbinator 2y agoI believe the concept of "soft off" for PCs was only introduced with the ATX standard in 1995, and the accompanying APM/ACPI specifications that were needed to implement it in software: https://wiki.osdev.org/Shutdown https://wiki.osdev.org/Shutdown
- rzzzt 2y agoIt depends on how soft is soft and if you consider laptops to be PCs. :) At that time some models already came with a "slide once to power on, slide in the same direction again to power off"-style switch and not of the mechanic toggling kind. The APM specification also predates ATX by a few years (1992).
- jdthedisciple 2y agoRaymond Chen bringing us gems as ever so often- Legend! Really enjoyed this one, made me remember those good old days.
- Brajeshwar 2y agoI have a story about that screen. I knew about the file’s location (a .bmp), and I usually tinker with it to show me my own. There was once an expo at a high-end hotel where IBM was introducing their PCs to our local town. I went with a bunch of friends. I fired up Paint on a few PCs and changed the BMP file to say that the computer was “Hacked” and to be prepared (something in that line). In the following demo, they got to that screen, and there was chaos — locked down the room, the frantic shutdown of the expo for hours. My friends had fun, and they knew then that I knew computers. :-)
- userbinator 2y agoA favourite among some people in that era was to change the "now" to "not" and see how long it takes for someone to notice.
- erjiang 2y agoI don't think the dialog as described in the article is accurate and I can't find a screenshot of Windows NT that says "Windows has been shut down." The only screenshots I can find say, "It is now safe to turn off your computer." The confusion around the Restart button is understandable, but the framing of the story seems to imply that the old dialog led to the later phrase, "It is now safe to turn off your computer."
- wink 2y agoThat screen was localized, so German windows had it translated. I think it was at HAL 2001 where I bought a black hoodie with the German version of the orange text "You can now safely throw away your computer" from the CCC merch stand or maybe a different one. I think it took about 10 years until I got the first comment about this weird text by a young coworker who had never experienced it (and also said something), but it got some chuckles and comments over the years, mostly by people who were definitely old enough to have seen this in person a lot in the late 90s.
- user9999999999 2y agobecause windows was a brittle POS software that required delicate usage from people who didnt know a megabyte from a kilobyte