DOCTOR
THIS MONTH THE DOCTOR TACKLES...
> PC Shutdown Woes
> Zoom Black Screen
> RAID in Cockpit
PC Won’t Stay Off
Hi Doc, I’ve built around 30 PCs over the past 20 years but have never seen this before. I recently built a new PC with Windows 10 Pro and all updates installed. My build: Gigabyte x570 PRO WIFI, Ryzen 5 5600X, 32GB RAM, 2TB MP600 NVMe SSD, RTX 3070 graphics, and EVGA BR600W PSU.
If I click “Start → Power →Shut down,” the computer simply restarts. I’ve searched online, tried everything in Windows, including turning Fast Boot off, but nothing works. The only way to switch off my PC is to hold the power button for a few seconds for a forced shutdown. Obviously, I’d really like to resolve this problem and be able to do a Windows shutdown the normal way. Any help would be great.
–Joel Briere
THE DOCTOR RESPONDS: Joel had already anticipated our first suggestion—making sure the automatic restart option is disabled when Windows bluescreens—so we next asked him to check Event Viewer for any potential clues. To open it, type “event” into the Search bar and click “Event Viewer.” After a short pause, you’ll get a summary of events by type, including Critical, Error, and Warning. Again, Joel reported no errors relating to reboots could be found.
At this point, we decided to run with the idea that Windows might not be the problem, but that the hardware was somehow involved. We widened our search to see if other X570 boards were exhibiting similar symptoms, and discovered a combination of Windows and UEFI settings that fixed Joel’s problem. Simply put, by re-enabling Fast Boot in Windows, but disabling Fast Boot and Wake on LAN in the UEFI, Joel was able to get his PC to shut down properly at last.