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April 19th, 2016 Why is there a screen that says "It is now safe to turn off your computer"? Raymond Chen Raymond Chen Show more I don't know whose idea it was, but Windows 95 added a screen that appeared when you shut down Windows. It's now safe to turn off your computer. This message was added because people would shut down Windows and then not know what to do next. I witnessed this first hand once. I was on an airplane flight, and the person sitting next to me was trying to turn off a laptop computer, which was running Windows NT. After selecting "Shut down", the operating system shut itself down, and then it displayed a screen that looked like this: Windows has been shut down. Restart My seatmate saw this screen and clicked the Restart button. Of course, this restarted the computer, and Windows started up again. My seatmate, somewhat confused as to why the computer didn't shut down, selected "Shut down" a second time. Again, the screen appeared: Windows has been shut down. Restart And my seatmate performed the only option available: Restart. At this point, I took the liberty of informing my seatmate, "You can just turn it off when you get to the moon-and-stars dialog." "No, I can't do that. I was told I have to use the Shut Down menu to shut down. But the computer won't shut down!" I had to explain, "This particular laptop doesn't know how to turn itself off. You have to turn it off manually via the power switch. Just wait for the moon-and-stars dialog to appear, and then you can push the power switch." I'm guessing that the person on the plane next to me normally used a laptop that supported power management, and it was able to turn itself off via software. But the laptop that was brought onto the plane did not support power management, and it had to be turned off manually. And back in the day, most computers fell into the second category. Power management was one of those newfangled thingies that only the fancy-pants computers supported. Enter the It's now safe to turn off your computer screen. This message was displayed when shutdown was complete and the computer did not support software-initiated power-off. It told the user, "Okay, shutdown is complete. It's okay. You can hit the power button now. I won't get mad; I promise." 3 0 0 * [facebook] Share on Facebook * Share on Twitter * [linkedin] Share on Linkedin Category Old New Thing Topics History Author Raymond Chen Raymond Chen Raymond has been involved in the evolution of Windows for more than 30 years. In 2003, he began a Web site known as The Old New Thing which has grown in popularity far beyond his wildest imagination, a development which still gives him the heebie-jeebies. The Web site spawned a book, coincidentally also titled The Old New Thing (Addison Wesley 2007). He occasionally appears on the Windows Dev Docs Twitter account to tell stories which convey no useful information. 0 comments Discussion are closed. [ ] [Reply] [Cancel] Code of Conduct Read next April 20, 2016 Why are mouse wheel messages delivered to the focus window instead of the window under the mouse? Raymond Chen Raymond Chen April 25, 2016 Getting MS-DOS games to run on Windows 95: Too much EMM memory Raymond Chen Raymond Chen Stay informed Get notified when new posts are published. [ ] Subscribe By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Follow this blog youtube Are you sure you wish to delete this comment? OK Cancel Sign in Theme Insert/edit link Close Enter the destination URL URL [ ] Link Text [ ] [ ] Open link in a new tab Or link to existing content Search [ ] No search term specified. Showing recent items. Search or use up and down arrow keys to select an item. 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