possible solution for incorrect shut down issues

[stampy69]

hey guys as many of you know by now i've been having some major issues with my hire jukes not being shut down properly, mainly from people just unplugging the juke instead of holding the power button down and windows being corrupted as a result.....(boot loops, blue screens blah blah blah)

We tried a few solutions like UPS's and tiny xp but i've found now what may be a sure fire way to fix it.

What i did first was separated my 80bg HDD into 2 partitions....partition #1 (at 10gb) is strictly for windows and videobox, plus a few little extra's i have like winrar etc.

then on partition #2 (at 70gb) i added only the video/mp3s files and artworks etc.

I then got hold of a program called acronis true image and made a backup image of my C: drive (3gig total) and saved it on the second partition with all the music.

Then i set up acronis to give you an option to boot into recovery mode when pressing F11 during bios loading.

Basically when you hit F11 a separate acronis menu is loaded and gives you the option of restoring the image backup of your C: drive before it became stuffed up.

I've tested this a few times now and it seems to work quite well, the image only takes about 7 minutes to load and restore everything and to be back up and functioning as it should be

The only real problem i can see now would be a total hdd failure that renders the #2 partition inoperable as well, but hopefully thats not gonna be a common occurance....lol

Hopefully this will help a few of you out who are in the same boat

[Bry]

very interestin dude i already use acronis forbackups seems u have found a new use for it
how did u "set up acronis to give you an option to boot into recovery mode when pressing F11 during bios loading"

[stampy69]

it was an option in the backup........cant rememebr what it was called something like recovery manager.....if you have a copy of acronis i'm sure you'll find it Bry

[Dj4nrv]

Hi guys i was just thinking that maybe a key switch wired to the onboard power pins might do the trick?? turn the key and select power down from the windows menu.
my only concern is if the juke will allow the os shutdown menu to show on top of videobox??
you could then issue a shutdown key to the person your hiring the juke to?
just a thought.......

[stampy69]

you could write a script with auto hotkeys to make say...."S" key to run shutdown.exe. i've been looking into this sort of stuff but its all a bit glitchy

been using usb numpads remapped for all the videobox keys but yeah its not 100%

[Dj4nrv]

it works for me .
i set windows to automatically shutdown when you press the power button then hooked up a key switch to the motherboard power pins and now when i turn the key the pc shuts down and is safe to pull the plug.

[jukejohn]

my way around it is a momentry swith to the mobo and a 12volt relay across the mains for lights/amp used this method with no probs for years
however the trouble with hire/pub jukes they tend to just unplug at mains while its on or the cleaner comes along and uses the same socket for the hoover lol

[stampy69]

exactly

at least now its easily recoverable though