Got myself a bit of a problem here on my desktop PC running Windows XP SP2.
About five days ago my PC started shutting down just as it finished rebooting; I could not get the darned thing to start and run! After many hours on the phone with Falcon Northwest support (which, By the way,I have no great respect for at this point...), I finally realized that the PC was actually going onto either Standby or Hibernate mode -- which is a little distressing since I have ALL power options disabled - no standby, no hibernate, no hard disk rundown, etc. During a few reboot attempts I noticed that the familiar white bar across the bottom of the display with vertical lines going through it like a progress bar -- like I am accustomed to seeing on a notebook PC, but never on my desktop.
Testing performed so far:
- 1) Memory: memtest86+ shows no problems with my memory (2 GB Corsair RAM). Well, actually it kept generating errors on Pass #6 until I discovered that on my Asus mobo I needed to disable legacy USB or that is common. Afterwards all showed as OK.
- 2) Hard Disk Drives: The Hitachi Drive Fitness tests show some bad areas on my E:\ drive - that needs to be replaced. (I have three hard drives in this machine: C:\ = a 80 GB Western Digital SATA IDE drive with only Windows XP and Program installations; s -- D:\ = a 500 GB Seagate SATA IDE drive with all data files, media files, everything not directly OS or program setup-related; and E:\ = another 500 GB Seagate SATA IDE drive used only for backup volumes - Acronis images of C; and D:, Quicken backups, ACDSee digital photo backups, and various data file backups using Nero's BackItUp utility.)
Up to that point I had seen the white bar immediately prior to the reboots failing, but I was unable to confirm that the PC was actually suspended. All Power Options are deselected regarding Standby and Hibernating. However ACPI is enabled in the BIOS and apparently something is activating it. Then late last night I was trying to clip something to OneNote 2007 using its standard hotkey - Win+S - and the PC immediately went into hibernation or standby! I restarted and tried it again -- same result.
Today I started searching for the program that had changed my Win+S hotkey shortcut from OneNote 2007 clipping to "Suspend Windows". I looked for applications installed recently and discovered that PhraseExpress -- an auto-text application that is recommended at Gizmo's TechSupportAlert site -- has Win+S configured as a hotkey for "Suspend this Computer Now". Aha! However after writing to the developer he assured me that this is not a setting generated by PhraseExpress, but would have had to be added by PhraseExpress. In other words, it already existed and PhraseExpress just scanned for current hotkeys and added it to its own settings.
It appears that this hotkey is using the macro {#run "C:\WINDOWS\System32\rundll32.exe" "PowrProf.dll, SetSuspendState"}, although I have not been able to determine why or how this hotkey was even created, or by which application.
Could a bad hard drive somehow generate this, or cause it to occur? Seems unlikely to me but Falcon NW insists that once I replace the defective hard drive all should be OK. I am having difficulty swallowing that.
How can I determine exactly what hotkeys are presently setup on my PC? I did see a few threads requesting this type of utility but it looks like there are none out there.
My primary reason for posting this is to see if anyone knows how I can display all hotkeys on my system. Troubleshooting will continue regardless, but knowing if an application did this will help a lot!
Thank you!
Jim
