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Question

Can start button be bypassed to start computer

Jun 27, 2012 12:33AM PDT

Have Compaq Presario SR-1000 running great for over four years, do not turn it off, just into sleep mode when I am not using it. Recently it turned off occasionally when I hit the sleep button. I cured this by adjusting the screensaver power saver settings which seemed to vary capriciously. My next move to advanced settings proved costly. I was asked should the sleep button cause the computer to sleep--- well I guess that makes sense--- and then the killer, should the start/stop button stop the computer. I suppose you all who are reading this as well as I are wondering if the engineer who wrote this instruction or question is still employed ???

Discussion is locked

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Clarification Request
So what exactly
Jun 27, 2012 12:49AM PDT

So what exactly is the question? Can you turn the computer on without pressing the power button?

If so, the answer is both yes and no depending on how much semantics you want to get into. All you're really doing by pressing the power button is completing a simple circuit that bridges two pins on the motherboard somewhere. So, with the aid of a trusty flathead screwdriver you could manually short those two pins. That's where the semantics come in, because be it a press of a button or a flathead screwdriver, you're effectively doing the exact same thing, and if those pins on the motherboard ever are damaged in some way, you're really in trouble.

However, given the age of the unit and the symptoms, you may well have a bad caps (google it) issue.

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Answer
Small world.
Jun 27, 2012 12:45AM PDT

I have this older r3000 by Compaq that the power button no longer turns off the machine. It will turn it on.

Since this is for legacy software development at the office we are not fixing this. Instead we use the start, shutdown button button we can use an APP to do this as well.

It calls a script with the shutdown command. Yes there are other shutdown apps too but the XP SHUTDOWN command is too easy to use in one line in a batch file so we did that and set the power settings to shutdown when we close the lid.

We have no intention of fixing this since it's just an old machine used infrequently to maintain old software. And again we won't fix it because it would take time to reload the OS and the development system. So there, we have workarounds and like an old car, we won't fix everything.
Bob