My media pc is an old Compaq duo-core something or other running Windows 7. At night we just switch everything off from the wall and switch it back on the next day. I know you are not supposed to do this, but it has worked without problem for years. An added advantage is that the computer auto-starts when the power comes back on. We have become accustomed to this convenience and do not want to give it up.
However, it seems we have finally run out of luck. Lately the computer has been having problems starting and I see a disk error 11 or something like that in the event log. I tried running chkdsk several times, but it hangs at 11% when checking files and returns an ‘unspecified’ Windows error.
For me this is not a biggie. The pc is used only for streaming and playing media files, nothing else. I can easily format the drive and start over. The drive itself is a relatively new SATA laptop drive so I don’t think it is stuffed, but if it is I can easily replace it. All of this is a price I am willing to pay to be able to keep switching the pc on and off at the wall. I don’t want to have to change that.
I do wonder if there is a tidier way to do this. I keep discovering amazing little gadgets I never knew existed that do all kinds of clever stuff. So is there any way to do a clean shut down when the powers fails, together with an automatic start-up when the power comes back on? The second part is the one I am having a hard time finding an answer for. Lots of UPS gadgets can do the clean shutdown, but how do you get the computer to automatically boot back up at power on if the shutdown has been clean? Is there a way to do this without having to press the power button? That is the answer I am looking for.