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The Windows “Safe To Shutdown” screen was implemented for users to know when they could safely turn off power to their PC, if it ran on hardware that couldn’t do so automatically. It has been present since at least as far back as Windows NT 3.1 build 297, from 28th June 1992. 🌃

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@windowsonwindows the first one might confuse people who don’t actually know what “safe to shutdown” actually means. people might assume it means “all tasks have been halted, therefore you can shutdown your computer”. it doesn’t. it actually means “nothing is running that can write to disk, therefore you can shutdown your computer”. that’s the actual reason unplugging your computer while it’s on is unsafe - writes to disk which are interrupted can corrupt files or only write into caches because they won’t be synced. in the first screenshot, the windows kernel is still running, but anything that would write to the disk isn’t running, which is why it’s possible to have a fully interactive experience while it’s still safe to shutdown your computer. i think that’s really cool and they never should’ve removed it

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@CarePackage17 I suppose most XP computers had the necessary hardware to self-shutdown.

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eviloatmeal, resident Death Stranding 2 apologist (arch, btw)

@ben @windowsonwindows It is safe to not turn off your computer.
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@eviloatmeal Unless you're on Windows 95 in which case the uptime counter will eventually run out of bits and force the issue.

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@CarePackage17 @windowsonwindows we had a parts-machine on XP that indeed still did it (aside from many other questionable shit). that's my first and only encounter with it, having to go upstairs to give the PC it's final turn-off before holidays
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