Am I the only one with a laptop who occasionally realises I am running late (or my pick-up arrives early), slams down the lid, sticks computer in bag and shoots off to do what I have to do?
Laptop set to shut down upon lid closure so no problem right? Wrong! When I get back computer's still on, running at a 1000deg and battery virtually drained. Opening lid reveals a message saying something about certain programs are preventing the computer from shutting down!
1. Who exactly is this message aimed for? Some micro person who lives between the keys of my computer?
2. Is there any way to force a computer to shut down upon lid closure? Now I know the thing's supposed to close down tidily and all that but there are times when I have other priorities and this unruly piece of junk really just needs to do as it is told. The 'can't shut down' message is a lie anyway since if I hold the on / off button down it shuts down whatever!

Running Vista BTW.

I don't think there's a neat way to do it but I found an ugly one: http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/in ... 533AAbGiLP - that article allows you to schedule a task for when you close the lid (or put the computer to sleep, so this is only useful if you don't use sleep anyway).
You would want to configure these two tasks: "shutdown /s" and "shutdown /f /t 180". The first starts a "graceful" shutdown, the second waits 3 minutes and then forces a shutdown.

That makes me laugh! Unlucky!

Thanks, I will look into it.