A frantic call was received from one of my Fort Wayne Computer repair clients last week. They were in the middle of a project for one of their clients and walked away from the laptop. On their return, Windows 7 displayed a “shutting down Windows” message with the spinning, progress wheel. They feared the project wasn’t saved and didn’t know what happened.
Over the phone I had them check to make sure the laptop was plugged into the power supply and it was plugged into the wall outlet. We wanted to rule out and electrical problem and the laptop was connected. Maybe it was a Windows update? My client couldn’t tell me one way or the other if they saw Windows update running.
Perhaps it was the power save mode. I tried to connect remotely but it was off-line so I couldn’t look at any settings. I wanted to see where the Power saving settings were if it was set to hibernate or shut down after a certain time period. Usually, I turn off power save mode for business computers so important work isn’t lost.
My client needed to get to their project so I made a high-level decision to force a restart. They held down the power button until the laptop turned off. I had them power back on and once Windows started and settled down, their project was recovered. They continued with the project and never had any more issues with the laptop shutting down that day. I checked back the next day and it was still fine.
I never did find out what happened, but I’m glad my client didn’t lose any data. They were glad I was there to walk them through getting their data back.