Be Prompted to Shut Down When the Power Button is Pressed

On your computer, you always use the power button to turn the computer on, but not that many people use the power button to turn the computer off anymore. This is because recent Microsoft Windows operating systems, such as Windows 98, 2000, and XP, have trained the computing population to shut down via Start > Shut down menu.

Back in the day when personal computers were starting to emerge in people’s home, and back when the only operating system that computers had was MS-DOS, the user had to always manually “park” the hard drive by running an executable command that prepared the hard drive to power down. This is now an unnoticed automatic feature that is integrated into Windows so that you do not have to worry about this extra step.

Depending on how your Microsoft Windows operating is installed, when you press the Power button on your computer at the time you want to shut off your computer, you may either be prompted for the “Shut Down” menu, or your computer will automatically shut down by default. If your computer automatically shuts down when the power button is pressed, and you want to be prompted by Windows with the various options regarding your computer’s shut down process, I have provided the steps below to enable this:

1. Open your Windows Control Panel by selecting the “Control Panel” option from the Start menu.
2. From within the Control Panel window, double click the “Power Options” icon. This will open the Power Options Properties window.
3. After the Power Options Properties window (shown below) has loaded, click on the “Advanced” tab at the top.
4. Within the “Advanced” tab, choose the option under the “Power Buttons” section labeled “When I press the power button on my computer.” The user will be presented with the following options:
   • Do nothing.
   • Ask me what to do.
   • Stand by.
   • Shut Down.
5. In this instance, choose the “Ask me what to do” option from the list, and then click on the OK button.

After the above steps have been performed, your computer will now prompt you what action you would like to perform prior to shutting your computer down after your computer’s power button has been pressed.