how does a power outage completely screw up Windows?

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cannondale06

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I will never understand this but it has happened more than a few times times. the first time was a little over three years where about every other brown out or surge would cause me to have to go back to a restore point. well one time I had system restore off so I ended up having to freaking re install Windows Vista at that time. I bought a ups at that time because I was sick of dealing with worrying about the power going off everyday.

well my ups died a few months ago and I have not been able to find a good deal on one again so I figured I would risk it. well I will be damned if the power didn't flicker on and off today and Windows 7 refused to properly start. I went into the repair Windows thing and as usual it never accomplishes a damn thing. I finally got it started and the pc was so slow that it was completely unusable. I tried rebooting a few more times but that did not help. luckily there was restore point from this morning so after using that all seems okay for now. I hate using those though because something inevitably gets screwed up going back to a restore point.

anyway, so why in 2011 is Windows that susceptible to screwing up from as simple power outage? every other appliance and device in the house some how magically starts back up with nary an issue. yes I know I should go buy a ups but to be honest I should not have to to for something as simple as few second power outage. plus I don't know a single person that owns a ups so its not like its that common of thing to own just keep your Windows insatll from getting jacked up. sorry if this was a rant but again I just cant believe a simple and common power outage can screw up a damn os.
 
I don't know, I've not had this problem before, and I frequently have to shut dowm my PCs via the switch on the PSU due to some instability with a game, driver issue, or my own sloppy coding :p
 
It happened to me once on a fresh install of Windows 2000 Professional, damn, it happened after finishing loading all the software on the computer and getting it ready for a ghost image :(
 
Aliens? I don't know. I've got 3 Windows 7 desktops that have experienced a power failure a few times over the last year from thunderstorms and circuit breaking tripping and I've never had this issue. Windows 7 from top to bottom on desktops, laptops, convertible tablets and slates has worked pretty much flawlessly for me. 7 has been SO stable for me on some many devices that I'm going to have lot of fear going to Windows 8 in the beginning at least.

One thing to note is that I don't try to tweak or screw with ANYTHING in Windows 7. I don't use driver and registry cleaners or any tool like that. About the only thing remotely advanced I've done at the OS level is put my page file on a separate hard drive on my sig rig, that's it.
 
My guess is that windows was writing something to a critical file when the power went out and so it didn't complete, hoseing the install.
 
munkle said:
My guess is that windows was writing something to a critical file when the power went out and so it didn't complete, hoseing the install.
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I don't think that was an install. And even during an install if the power goes down the install should pick back up where it left off. I've had this happen on doing a Windows 7 install and the install resumed just fine.
 
heatlesssun said:
I don't think that was an install. And even during an install if the power goes down the install should pick back up where it left off. I've had this happen on doing a Windows 7 install and the install resumed just fine.
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I didn't mean a literal installing of windows but the windows installed on his hard drive.
 
You could try it, but it would probably have severe performance indications. What File System is this using? NTFS? I haven't seen this since the days of Win98/FAT32 - I've cut power to dozens, probably hundreds of XP/Vista/7 systems on NTFS without ever losing anything.

Also, see if this still happens with everything at stock speeds.
 
cannondale06 said:
anyway, so why in 2011 is Windows that susceptible to screwing up from as simple power outage? every other appliance and device in the house some how magically starts back up with nary an issue.
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Last time I looked, my microwave, fridge, TV, and coffee maker don't have any hard drives in them.
 
I've had quite a few power outages over the years and I've never lost a windows install or had to return to a previous restore point.
 
I'm just curious what the OP meant when he/she said "my ups died a few months ago" because more than likely what he/she meant to say was "the battery in my ups died a few months ago" which leads me to saying all ya have to do is replace the battery - and that's a lot cheaper than a whole new UPS. :D

I've never had a UPS (of the dozens I've owned and thousands I've worked with over the decades) just up and literally die on me just because it completely flakes out and stops working. Pretty much 100% of the time on all of them if they "stop working" it's the battery needing to be replaced and nothing more.

Just something to consider, OP, if you still have that UPS - get a new battery and you're good to go.

As for the Windows issue you're asking about, I've yet to find myself in a situation where the installation gets completely hosed/pooched/wrecked completely just because the power went out, and again that's over decades of using Windows on thousands upon thousands of various desktops and laptops of all kinds.

One of those things, I suppose...
 
^^ what he said.

I'd disable write caching only until the UPS was operational again.
It may better your chances of something not being wrtten completely during
a brown/black out.
 
Joe Average said:
I'm just curious what the OP meant when he/she said "my ups died a few months ago" because more than likely what he/she meant to say was "the battery in my ups died a few months ago" which leads me to saying all ya have to do is replace the battery - and that's a lot cheaper than a whole new UPS. :D

I've never had a UPS (of the dozens I've owned and thousands I've worked with over the decades) just up and literally die on me just because it completely flakes out and stops working. Pretty much 100% of the time on all of them if they "stop working" it's the battery needing to be replaced and nothing more.

Just something to consider, OP, if you still have that UPS - get a new battery and you're good to go.

As for the Windows issue you're asking about, I've yet to find myself in a situation where the installation gets completely hosed/pooched/wrecked completely just because the power went out, and again that's over decades of using Windows on thousands upon thousands of various desktops and laptops of all kinds.

One of those things, I suppose...
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the battery replacement cost just as much as buying a whole new unit so yes the UPS is dead. ;)
 
Well that's what you get for buying a $20 UPS I guess, 'cause I've yet to find a UPS that I couldn't get a replacement battery at ~$20 or less. :p
 
Joe Average said:
Well that's what you get for buying a $20 UPS I guess, 'cause I've yet to find a UPS that I couldn't get a replacement battery at ~$20 or less. :p
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nice try...it was $100+ retail UPS that I had bought on sale for about half that. I contacted APC and since it was now out of warranty the battery replacement was nearly the same cost as getting a new unit.
 
You can typically get the batteries at motorcycle or fishing supply shops, that's basically what they are more often than not: 6V or 12V deep cycle batteries. I've got 2 APC 1500 watt units I've had for 5+ years, replaced the batteries in each twice with just that very thing: 6V deep cycle batteries from a fishing supply shop here in Vegas, no problems.

Total cost: about $78 so far for the 4 batteries.

There's no "special UPS batteries" - that's all marketing hype to jack up the costs of the replacements... but, to each their own I guess.
 
Windows is very fragile, which is also a nice little play on words there. :D I have noticed it does not take much for a windows install to be completely screwed up. A power outage is one way to do it. Best to just go the UPS route.

To not put only windows down, I have seen a Linux install also be completely unusable after a bad shut down. Only once, though. Bottom line, just get a UPS.

As for replacement batteries, don't buy from the manufacturer, they will rape you. See if there is a local electrical store in your town that sells sealed lead acid batteries and buy from there. I've also heard of people having luck with marine batteries. I almost tried it but chickened out. Those are a bit more special as they need to be vented and you need to add water to them regularly. Sealed ones you don't have to maintain, but they are more susceptible to overcharging, which should not be an issue with a ups.

You also don't need to get the same amp hour. I recently replaced 12ah batteries in a ups with like 7ah ones. Cost me 50 bucks for both batteries. As long as you can get over a minute, you will get past 90% of "outages" which are usually just 1-2 second blips. I tested the UPS with my replacement batteries, I ran a 550w heater on it for a good 30 seconds before it started beeping faster. I stopped it myself as I did not want to push it too hard. With a 150w bulb it went on for a good 10 minutes until I got tired of the beeping so I stopped it.
 
There's usually plenty of 3rd party batteries a lot cheaper unless it uses some really unusual size. That said, I haven't had a power failure ruin a system install since Windows 95 and my son loves playing with the switches on power supplies when we're not looking and I live in a building very prone to brownouts as well.

One thing that may be a possibility is that your bios is resetting and changing your drive controller mode or something. I have a system with an EVGA 780i board and it will reset the settings on any power loss. I've tried changing the battery and just about everything else so I've learned to live with it and reconfigure the bios after anytime I move it or we lose power.
 
I pulled the APC sticker off the batteries and got the exact battery info and I am looking at about 55-60 bucks to get an equivalent replacement from a few different places. that's about what I paid for the UPS 3.5 years ago.
 
cannondale06 said:
I pulled the APC sticker off the batteries and got the exact battery info and I am looking at about 55-60 bucks to get an equivalent replacement from a few different places. that's about what I paid for the UPS 3.5 years ago.
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Which is half what it was valued at and certainly worth the cost to get that continued protection back and other benefits.

Think of it this way: with no protection or backup (even if you've got some casual "surge supressor" on the power line to the PC/monitor/etc at this point), you're having two issues:

1) You could have a trip in the power, aka a brownout, or even worse a full blackout, and end up with this entire situation again at some point

2) The worst case scenario: not only would a brownout or a blackout occur, but when it comes back up to the somewhat normal power levels, there's always a chance of a surge or a serious burst of power through the circuit which is most certainly going to fry something in the process

So, it becomes a situation of choosing what someone might consider to be the lesser of two evils: get a new battery and extend the life of the UPS you paid half-price for in the past as well as provide protection and battery backup capabilities for your PC/monitor/etc which could result in hundreds if not thousands of dollars in damage, or...

Potentially end up with a dead PC/monitor/etc simply because you decided it wasn't cost effective to keep that UPS going with a new battery which would basically put you at the cost point of the full retail value of the UPS which you got for half-price when you bought it originally.

Seems like a no-brainer to me. :p

(I'll shut up now...)
 
yes but again these are not the exact batteries if that matters. they are supposedly "equivalent to" the model batteries I have. the exact batteries I have are around 90 bucks shipped.
 
A few months ago 2 of my 3 APC Backups 1000 XS/RS units had their batteries died and to buy a new is about $150 or so.

Anyways didn't want to spend that for two new units when it was just the batteries so I looked around and +++++++ website had my exact batteries for about $60. Probably could get them cheaper but this way I didn't have to mess around with attaching two batteries together, just pull out the old and put in the new ones.
 
I had an APC backup that failed and caused the batteries to bulge and it was 2-3 years past the warranty and APC gladly replaced the UPS with a new unit.
I wasn't even asking about replacing the UPS, I was asking if there was a way to test the UPS before I bought new batteries since the UPS would just beep and shut off and that the batteries were bulging. They asked for my shipping address and sent me a new UPS.

002.jpg
 
Woah.

Funny, I have the exact same UPS. It's the one where one of the batteries cracked and no longer holds a charge (does not look near that pic though!). I still need to find a place to recycle it, it's sitting on my counter. The other battery is still good, so I'll probably just use it for non critical stuff like power a string of LED lights during a power outage or something, or if ever I have a UPS that only needs one battery. I ended up buying some replacement batteries from a local electrical supply store and it's been running fine since.
 
cannondale06 said:
anyway, so why in 2011 is Windows that susceptible to screwing up from as simple power outage?
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I purposely killed the power on my desktop the other day and Windows 7 is just fine. I've never experienced that issue before, anyway. I also frequently kill the power on systems at work while Windows is loaded and it's never corrupted the OS. So, I don't think it's Windows. I think you have very dirty power, or a PSU that's going bad. It would explain why a UPS is helping you since they provide a much cleaner power to the system. Because in reality, unless your installing the software with it that tells your computer to shut down when the power goes out, having a UPS plugged in doesn't mean the act of losing power on the system is going to be better. You're power is still going to just up and quit once the batteries are empty.

Also, I wouldn't buy batteries from the manufacturer. Just pull the old ones to get the model number and search online.
 
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in very rare instances it is possible to corrupt a windows install due to a power outage. It does not happen very often but it can none the less especially if a critical system file was in use at the time and didn't get properly written to the disk...

You can repair the installation or you could try a system restore.
 
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