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Having used Windows XP for some time, I’ve grown used to pressing the power button to turn off my laptop. In Windows Vista, pressing the power button doesn’t shutdown, instead it ’sleeps’. I don’t know about you, but I never had any luck with ’sleep’ or ‘hibernate’ in XP, something always breaks and I end up restarting anyway, and it’ll take some time for me to give it a try in Vista. So, how can you get back the ’shutdown’ behavior you’ve grown accustomed to? Here’s a pictoral step-by-step on how to make the Vista power button shutdown instead of sleep.
- Open the Start Menu and click on Control Panel
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Click on System Maintenance
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Click on Power Options
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Select your preferred power management plan and click on Change Plan Settings
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On the window that opens, click on Change advanced power settings (towards the bottom of the window)
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In the Power Options window, click the ‘+’ to the left of Power Buttons and Lid to expand it, then do the same to it’s subitem Power button action
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You’ll see two options, On battery: and Plugged in:, with Sleep to the right of each by default. Click on the word Sleep next to On battery: and you’ll see the options to Do nothing, Hibernate and Shut down. Choose the one you want, in my case Shut down, and repeat for the Plugged in: option.
- Click OK and close the windows and you’re ready to go!
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ITsVISTA Tip #8: The Vista Power Button Revisited | ITsVISTA
Dec 30, 2006 at 6:37 pm
[...] My first tip was how to change the behavior of the power button. The default is to Sleep, but I prefer to actually Shut Down. It's only seven tips later, and I've already got a different way to do this, mostly because it's a few steps quicker. [...]
30 Tips for Getting More (or Less) Out of Windows Vista | ITsVISTA
Jan 31, 2007 at 9:25 am
[...] How to Make the Vista Power Button Shutdown Instead of Sleep [...]
Eliena Andrews
Apr 1, 2007 at 4:34 am
Hii,
thanks for sharing this nice tip…. Uhh, i m gonna be VIsta King from this site …
Best Regards,
Eliena Andrews
Was
Apr 9, 2007 at 6:42 pm
The button changes, that’s great but the first option that shows up is SLEEP, so this is useless!! I’ve been searching for an answer.
XP let you not have SLEEP as an option when shutting down. When I click the new changed button that now says shutdown it still wants to pick sleep. When you shutdown in XP it remembered the last action you used. Vista is not doing that which sucks cAUSE IT TAKES SO LONG FOR MY SYSTEM TO wake up!!!!
Joe
Apr 9, 2007 at 7:49 pm
You must be looking at the ‘Start Menu Power Button’. If you’re changing the actual ‘Power Button’, no options are shown, pressing the power button on your computer immediately does what you set. If you want the ‘power button’ in the start menu to show ’shutdown’, skip down to the setting for ‘Start Menu Power Button’.
Was
Apr 10, 2007 at 7:06 pm
Yes that did work thank you much Joe..great..
I support a company that asks it customers to shut down their PC’s, it’s going to be a night mare with Vista Customers! YIKES!!! People are going to have to unplug their computers just to make sure their off!!
Josh
Jun 21, 2007 at 2:42 am
Thanks for that, i was looking for a way to change the start menu button from sleep to shutdown because everytime the pc resumes from a sleep, a blue error screen appears after 5 mins. Happens with 2 different model dell pcs. Usless…
Kvasir
Jul 6, 2007 at 9:21 pm
Haha! I learned about the nonpower button, button on accident. First day I got my laptop, after using it, used the “power button” to shut down my computer (not knowing it was putting it to sleep)!! I later in the day installed another gig of ram to my laptop… only after pressing the power button I saw a message stating windows did not power down properly (ugh! Thanks MS!). That was my first experience with the new power button (thankfully i didn’t damage my system).
Thanks for the info on here ^^ I’m going to change it right now in case anybody else uses it, they can correctly shut down and not sleep.
shahid khan
Jul 29, 2007 at 4:57 am
thanks for ur great tip dear keep up the good work dear
Mike
Sep 3, 2007 at 10:20 pm
Thanks for the great article! I saw this over at My-PC-Help.com a few days ago. (www.my-pc-help.com/Articles/KnowledgeBase/tabid/147/topic/Vista+Powerdown+to+Shutdown/Default.aspx)
Keep posting this kinda of stuff!
Peter
Oct 6, 2007 at 7:39 am
Of course, one can go through these steps, or revert to the Windows 2000 classic Start Menu, where it brings up the old Shut Down menu with the old behavior. Also, friggin turn off automatic updates for laptops because it’s gonna wake up and update itself.
gaurav sharma
Oct 13, 2007 at 1:40 pm
great work .keep it up
Freddie
Oct 23, 2007 at 4:26 am
Thank you! Very clear demo. Excellent work!
Fox
Feb 10, 2008 at 7:19 pm
This is great! I’ve been using control-alt-delete for so long… It’s so nice to be able to just click and shutdown. Thanks.
Roopa
Feb 13, 2008 at 12:23 pm
hey..it’s very cool try..
Barry Smith
Feb 22, 2008 at 4:58 am
Woot !!! Changed the Start-Shut Down button to Shut Down… Thanks heaps.
Another silly decision by MS corrected!!
Marty
Feb 23, 2008 at 3:51 pm
THANK YOU !!!
Yes, this very helpful !
Anthony O'Neal
Mar 3, 2008 at 6:38 pm
The sleep feature in Vista is much improved from previous versions of window. I don’t ever shutdown my computer anymore. Personally, though, I have my laptops power button set to sleep, and the menu set to shutdown though.
I’m kind of surprised that no one here figured out how to set the power button themselves, or figured out that the little menu next to the power button contained options to turn do a hard shutdown. I guess that’s what you get at these newb sites.
Joe
Mar 3, 2008 at 9:57 pm
@Anthony: Share with us your wisdom oh great one. We’ll try to understand best we can…
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