Laptop - emergency shutdown

[Chris S]

I have a Lenovo ThinkPad. On a couple of occasions now the CPU usage has gone up to 100% and I have been unable to do use the keyboard (not even ALT-CTRL-DEL) or on/off button.

I've just had to disconect it from the mains and let the battery go flat before I can restart it.
Does anybody know of an emergency shutdown routine please?

 

[subaqua]

I have a Lenovo ThinkPad. On a couple of occasions now the CPU usage has gone up to 100% and I have been unable to do use the keyboard (not even ALT-CTRL-DEL) or on/off button.

I've just had to disconect it from the mains and let the battery go flat before I can restart it.
Does anybody know of an emergency shutdown routine please?

did you press and hold the on off button?

if that doesn't work then unplug it and unplug the battery- instant off

 

[ushills]

Usually pressing and holding the power button forces a shutdown on all laptops.

 

[Kies]

As others have said, holding the power button down, on any computer usually forces an immediate shutdown. If this is a new problem, i would do a restore to a point before the symptoms started. It could be a new peice of software for example?

 

[ColinJ]

As others have said, holding the power button down, on any computer usually forces an immediate shutdown.

Strictly - a shutdown after a few seconds. If you expect it to be immediate and stop pressing, then it will not work!

 

[Kies]

You took me too literaly Colin .... Nothing is immediate in windows :-)

 

[ColinJ]

You took me too literaly Colin .... Nothing is immediate in windows :-)

And some things don't even work if you wait!

 

[Chris S]

Thanks - I'll give both those a try. I'll have to find out where the battery is first, I've still got the users manual after 5 years!

PS - I haven't installed any new software. If I give the laptop a bump the LED on the internet dongle flickers and I lose the connection. The laptop then seems to go into overdrive trying to restablish the connection.

 

[MrJamie]

Note the time it happens and have a look in the event log, just incase somethings been logged as going wrong when it happens.

Start>Run>type 'eventvwr.msc'>enter. Look under the "windows logs" section, in the various sections there, both at the time it happened and have a little scroll around looking for errors, criticals, warnings etc.