Thanks for the input
Townsbg.
An update for my post @ Local Time: 01:16 AM today.
I have talked to the person using the computer yesterday and the problem was that the computer appeared to get stuck during its normal shutdown procedure.
Apparently they went to the start/shutdown then turned the screen off and went away. A couple of hours later they found the computer was still running, they turned the screen on and saw a blank-black screen.
Moving the mouse had no effect and they noted that after 15 minutes of inactivity (not sure what they were doing during this period) there was a message indicating the screen had powered down-entered sleep mode (we have the Vista Control Panel, Power Options set to put the screen to sleep after 15 minutes).
As would be the normal procedure, moving the mouse caused the screens power on light to re start suggesting the screen functions were restarted, however as before there was only a blank-black screen displayed.
From this I have concluded that although the computer was stuck a some point in its shutdown procedure it was still correctly controlling the screen sleep functions.
They then completed a forced shutdown. However, when we restarted the machine it went through a normal windows start-up sequence... it started as it normally would had it been shutdown normally. I.e. there was not the expected black screen with crude white text and a 20 second timer counting down to a normal restart.
I had a look at the Event Viewer logs from yesterday, nothing jumped out but id did notice the following, could this be a clue... I have no idea
:
Windows detected your registry file is still in use by other applications or services. The file will be unloaded now. The applications or services that hold your registry file may not function properly afterwards.
DETAIL -
4 user registry handles leaked from \Registry\User\S-1-5-21-2689138593-1012205953-2850960868-1000:
Process 1196 (\Device\HarddiskVolume1\Program Files\TuneUp Utilities 2011\TuneUpUtilitiesService32.exe) has opened key \REGISTRY\USER\S-1-5-21-2689138593-1012205953-2850960868-1000
Process 1196 (\Device\HarddiskVolume1\Program Files\TuneUp Utilities 2011\TuneUpUtilitiesService32.exe) has opened key \REGISTRY\USER\S-1-5-21-2689138593-1012205953-2850960868-1000
Process 1196 (\Device\HarddiskVolume1\Program Files\TuneUp Utilities 2011\TuneUpUtilitiesService32.exe) has opened key \REGISTRY\USER\S-1-5-21-2689138593-1012205953-2850960868-1000
Process 1196 (\Device\HarddiskVolume1\Program Files\TuneUp Utilities 2011\TuneUpUtilitiesService32.exe) has opened key \REGISTRY\USER\S-1-5-21-2689138593-1012205953-2850960868-1000
Regards