Hey, my custom shutdown sound got cut off (or didn't play). What's up?

re: Hey, my custom shutdown sound got cut off (or didn't play). What's up?

foxyshadis — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 05:06:13 GMT

I don't have Vista handy or I'd test this myself right now, but do ‘WaitToKillAppTimeout’ and ‘HungAppTimeout’ in HKCU\Control Panel\Desktop\ still work to extend or contract the time allowed to shut down applications, thus giving a longer playback?

If getting it to play at all just requires lowering the filesize, then mp3-encoding it in sound recorder would be the logical solution. ;)

re: Hey, my custom shutdown sound got cut off (or didn't play). What's up?

El Guapo — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 06:58:54 GMT

Errr... I think closing the lid of a laptop makes it go to sleep, not shut down.

And I don't agree that Vista handles this any better. I have suffered from the "hot laptop" problem which did not sleep when I closed the lid.

re: Hey, my custom shutdown sound got cut off (or didn't play). What's up?

Dean Harding — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 07:08:23 GMT

Makes sense to me.

The only question I have is the bit where you say "or has previously answered" -- what if you've never answered that question before and you just close the lid of your laptop? In this particular case, it might shutdown on its own after it's played the sound anyway, but what if it really WAS hung?

re: Hey, my custom shutdown sound got cut off (or didn't play). What's up?

LarryOsterman — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 08:19:51 GMT

El Guapo: It depends on how the system's configured. You can say that closing the lid sleeps (the default) or that closing the lid shuts the system down.

Dean: As El Guapo pointed out, the default action on the laptop is to sleep, so it sleeps immediately (and restores very quickly (under 5 seconds on my laptop)).

This logic only kicks in for shutdown.

foxyshadis: You can't use MP3s for system sounds. It's silly, and it sucks, but you can't. Interestingly enough, it would probably be slower - it takes a non trivial amount of time to start playing an MP3, while we can start playing a .WAV file in under 100ms.

re: Hey, my custom shutdown sound got cut off (or didn't play). What's up?

Dean Harding — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 09:00:30 GMT

> And I don't agree that Vista handles this any better.

Er, it handles it MUCH better. Just because it's happened "once" doesn't mean it's just as bad as Windows XP (where it used to happen *all the time* for me.

> This logic only kicks in for shutdown.

Fair enough, but you can still configure it to shutdown when you close the lid. I guess what I mean is, does the system handle closing the lid differently to clicking "shutdown" (since you're usually still around to click on confirmation dialogs and whatnot when you click "shutdown" but not when you close the lid).

I guess this getting a bit off-topic for the originaly post...

Personally, I usually turn my startup/shutdown sounds off. I can't imagine anyone CHOOSING to sit there and listen to a 2 minute-long shutdown sound :-)

re: Hey, my custom shutdown sound got cut off (or didn't play). What's up?

Dean Harding — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 09:00:33 GMT

> And I don't agree that Vista handles this any better.

Er, it handles it MUCH better. Just because it's happened "once" doesn't mean it's just as bad as Windows XP (where it used to happen *all the time* for me.

> This logic only kicks in for shutdown.

I guess this getting a bit off-topic for the originaly post...

Personally, I usually turn my startup/shutdown sounds off. I can't imagine anyone CHOOSING to sit there and listen to a 2 minute-long shutdown sound :-)

re: Hey, my custom shutdown sound got cut off (or didn't play). What's up?

LarryOsterman — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 09:07:03 GMT

Dean, I also can't imagine a startup or shutdown sound that is that long. The shutdown sound is one of the shortest that ships in Vista (I believe it's around .5 seconds).

I should try to see what happens on my laptop, I honestly don't know what it will do.

re: Hey, my custom shutdown sound got cut off (or didn't play). What's up?

Clinton Pierce — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 16:38:22 GMT

To Larry and El Guapo's comment,

My laptops are configured to sleep when the lid is closed. I would hope, though, that if a shutdown has been started and I close the lid. (Start->Shutdown. Pause. Close lid) That the sleep wouldn't kick in, but the shutdown would allowed finish.

Under XP that doesn't happen. It usually sleeps during the shutdown. Absolutely, incredibly the wrong behavior. I can't tell you how many times I've opened the lid hours later, had the machine wakes up and announces "shutting down" and then shuts down.

My Vista laptop does the same thing on occasion.

re: Hey, my custom shutdown sound got cut off (or didn't play). What's up?

Robert Rosic — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 17:35:10 GMT

> > And I don't agree that Vista handles this any better.

> Er, it handles it MUCH better. Just because it's happened "once" doesn't mean it's just as bad as Windows XP (where it used to happen *all the time* for me.

This is exactly reason for most of my bitching about Vista...when I close the lid I wan't that computer in sleep mode - and with Vista on my IBM/Lenovo T60 I often get "burned" fingers, not to mention empty battery

re: Hey, my custom shutdown sound got cut off (or didn't play). What's up?

JamesNT — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 20:45:56 GMT

Larry, et al,

I have Vista Ultimate on a brand spanking new Dell XPS laptop with all the blinking lights and everything (oh yes, it is that cool).

Microsoft made the CORRECT choice. I have my laptop configured to hibernate when I close the lid. And yes, when I close the lid, that means hibernate - NOW.

Do not pass Go.

Do not collect $200.

Go straight to Save state and hibernate so I can pack you up and go to my next meeting or back to the office.

Thank you to both you, Mr. Osterman, and Lord Chen for all the hard work you guys put into making Windows the OS it is. If I could, I'd send both of you flowers.

JamesNT

re: Hey, my custom shutdown sound got cut off (or didn't play). What's up?

JamesNT — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 20:47:55 GMT

Everyone else,

For those of you still having shutdown issues with Vista, I would say it is time for you to investigate what apps you have that may be misbehaving. And don't forget drivers. In fact, ESPECIALLY drivers since they run with all kinds of priviledge.

JamesNT

re: Hey, my custom shutdown sound got cut off (or didn't play). What's up?

LarryOsterman — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 21:11:06 GMT

JamesNT's right. Vista actually has extensive logging that will let you know details about what's causing slowdowns on suspend and resume.

If you start the event viewer and navigate to Applications and Services Logs\Microsoft\Windows\Diagnostics-Performance, you can find a series of diagnostic log entries that measure perf issues on your machine.

re: Hey, my custom shutdown sound got cut off (or didn't play). What's up?

foxyshadis — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 23:44:37 GMT

You can use mp3s through the acm codec. ;) Assuming fraunhofer is still included with Vista. The problem is that PlaySound will decode the entire thing to PCM in memory before it starts playing - I did this on 95 back in the day, and it was pretty obnoxious, but now I can decode a short song in well under a second - but yeah, that's definitely an extra playtime hit.

re: Hey, my custom shutdown sound got cut off (or didn't play). What's up?

Steve Robinson — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 18:18:56 GMT

Hi Larry,

I know it's not audio related, but I'm assuming there is some logic that say:

"If an external monitor is connected and on, AND the lid is closed, do nothing"

I've got Vista at home but not at work, and i don't have a laptop, but i hope that case is countered for.

Steve

re: Hey, my custom shutdown sound got cut off (or didn't play). What's up?

ncgloy — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 18:54:17 GMT

That sounds pretty lame. I thought Vista was supposed to fix all those problems with apps blocking the shutdown attempt ? And now you're telling us we have to go dig through the event log for clues ? I suppose that works if you're a Windows developer, but what about regular users ? Why can't it just work ?

re: Hey, my custom shutdown sound got cut off (or didn't play). What's up?

LarryOsterman — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 19:13:47 GMT

ncgloy: You misunderstood.

Vista has made it so that a machine can standby or resume in seconds. But drivers can mess things up, especially on resume.

If you HAVE a resume or sleep problem, you can look in the logs to diagnose which driver is screwing up your system, then complain to the vendor of that driver.

Steve, there's a power setting that indicates what to do with the lid closed. But that's a good point. I'll ask the power people about it.

re: Hey, my custom shutdown sound got cut off (or didn't play). What's up?

Brandon Paddock — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 07:22:41 GMT

I used to have the "hot laptop" (plus dead battery) problem on my Toshiba M4 with XP. It would mostly happen when I took it out of the dock and closed it quickly. It would even proudly announce with a dialog that "Suspend operation was aborted because Eject PC is still running!" - clearly one of the stupidest most ill-conceived dialogs I've ever seen. They obviously knew what I wanted to do, but instead of delaying the sleep operation (or getting the hell out of the way) they cancel the action I invoked and display a useless dialog... which I'd never see after closing the lid and putting it into my bag.

When it upgraded to Vista, that problem went away (EVEN if the stupid Toshiba application was still installed, though it turned out to be unnecessary on Vista so it got disabled).

Both on that machine and on my Macbook, Vista (not counting pre-release) has never ever once failed to go to sleep when I closed the lid, or to resume when I opened it up. It also never fails to switch to hibernate mode if I leave the laptop in its case, asleep, all weekend.

If you're having problems with sleep / resume, it's 99% likely caused by a driver problem (or *possibly* a bad / outdated BIOS - very troublesome on Toshiba laptops from what I've seen). If you have an nVidia chip, for example, you probably have resume issues. Especially if you don't have they very latest driver installed (for which there probably isn't a "sanctioned" driver, so you're forced to use something from www.laptopvideo2go.com to get your machine to work properly. OEMs suck.)

re: Hey, my custom shutdown sound got cut off (or didn't play). What's up?

Norman Diamond — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 10:11:16 GMT

Logoff can still take forever though. In Vista Ultimate, after trying "Logoff" 3 times, I tried "Shutdown" 3 times, and soon will try the power button.

re: Hey, my custom shutdown sound got cut off (or didn't play). What's up?

Igor — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 02:17:32 GMT

>I can't imagine anyone CHOOSING to sit there and

>listen to a 2 minute-long shutdown sound :-)

Actually I can -- some patriot listening to a hymn :D

Just kidding. I wouldn't give those nuts more than 5 seconds of time for that sound. I turn them off too.

Those sounds used to have some meaning back when machines were very slow. You could turn on the PC, wander off to grab a cup of coffee, and still know when you have to came back to actually start working on it.

What really happens when you shutdown Windows?

Larry Osterman's WebLog — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 20:48:08 GMT

About a year or so ago, I wrote a post that talked about the Windows shutdown experience.   A couple