It's ok to turn off your computer

[Genny Engel]

On Thu, 3 Jul 1997, Rose Taylor wrote:

> Has anyone experienced the following problem:
> A machine is reset because its hung, win95 logo comes up (clouds image) =
> then the message "It's ok to turn off your computer" pops up on the =
> screen.  It's happened a few times, to different computers.  I cant =
> access win95 at all, using a boot disk I get same message when I type in =
> win.  I'm beginning to wonder if it's a bug and win95B has the fix...

Not exactly a bug, just darned annoying.  Your registry has a good chance
of getting corrupted every time you reboot a hung or crashed Win95
machine. 

Do you have the "Introducing Microsoft Windows 95" booklet that came with
Win95?  Look at page 84, "Restoring the registry."  Follow the steps
listed there.  They are:

1. Restart computer
2. At "Starting Windows 95..." message press F8
3. Choose Command Prompt Only
4. Change to Win95's directory (e.g., if it is in Windows:  cd c:\windows)
5. Type:  attrib -h -r -s system.dat
          attrib -h -r -s system.da0
          attrib -h -r -s user.dat
          attrib -h -r -s user.da0
6. Optionally, copy system.dat and user.dat to system.bak and user.bak
7. Type:  copy system.da0 system.dat
          copy user.da0 user.dat
8. Restart computer

In my experience, if you get this happening a lot, it's a heck of a lot
easier to boot from a diskette with a spare system.dat and user.dat, then
just start with step 5 above.  

To keep it from happening a lot, investigate whether you are getting a lot
of crashes and hangs, and test alternate configurations.  I switched from
Netmanage Chameleon 5.0's TCP/IP stack to Windows 95's own stack, and that
SUBSTANTIALLY reduced the Win95 hangs. 

Genny Engel
MELVYL System User Services
University of California
gen at dla.ucop.edu