laptop help urgently!!

[netibiza]

Have just been messing with daughter's toshiba and turned it off on the switch (couldn't find shut down) and now there's a red light glowing on and off, how do I turn it off please!!!

[ChuckFickens]

it's on standby

Press the power button again and it should come back on then shut it down properly.

[netibiza]

Ooops thanks!

[netibiza]

Oh relief, now she'll never know - thanx

[vehelpfulguy]

NEVER just turn the power of at the plug on a laptop or PC.

The hard disk is spinning very fast and if you stop it suddendly it could crash and wreck the hard disk and make the laptop or PC unusable.

[Panic Button]

I agree that you should shut a computer down properly, but have never heard this about a spinning hard drive damaging itself when power is suddenly removed.

Are you sure of your facts vehelpfulguy?

[ACtheTROLL]

Agree totally that you should ... not so sure about why though
the reason not to switch off is primarily because of the way windows works (never had this palaver in dos ... just pull the plug)

windows uses temp files to do just about everything .... it also hangs on to data 'till it sees a lull in what you are doing
and then writes it to disc.
when you shut down ... all the whizzing and banging that goes on is windows tidying up after itself
so three problems
1 you stand a chance of loosing your most recent work
2 you will certainly leave all the cr@p behind (look in the temp folder)
2 If the disk is updating the File database (FAT or MFT) when power goes off there is a chance (slim but real) that you'll loose the whole drive

the only physical threat of damage I can see is the possibility of a power spike (pretty slip on a lappy) taking out the mobo