Unable to restart or shutdown windows 8

[Shingane]

I have installed windows 8 Consumer preview on my laptop for testing purpose and since installing it I am not able to turn it off or restart it. When I am clicking on restart or shutdown then screen goes black and stays like that, I can see hard drive light flashing which clearly states that it hasn’t shut off. I have to force it sown to shut down using power button. I did not had any issue in while installing it so I am not able to make out what might be wrong, I wanted to know if there is anything I need to check out rather than reinstalling whole windows 8 again? Any ideas?

[Kh@LnaYak]

I had faced similar issue when I was using windows 7 and at that time I had reinstalling windows for solving the issue, currently I am running windows 8 on my system and I am not having any issue with it. I won’t suggest you to go for reinstallation directly but you can try out resetting windows 8 which is a new feature.

For resetting windows 8 you can refer below steps:

• Insert your Windows 8 installation DVD or USB thumb drive , Boot to System Recovery Options , click on “Reset your PC’ and click on next.
• When you get a prompt saying for further access then click on your listed administrator account, enter the required details and proceed.
• Now when you get a prompt asking to select os then select windows 8 Consumer preview.
• In next screen you will get two options, one for removing all files from all drives and one from Windows 8 drive only.
• You can select of the option accordingly, after that you will get another screen with two options, one for through reset which will take more time and other for quick reset. Since you are running in to weird issue whose cause is unknown I will suggest you to choose through one.
• Once you have chosen one option and clicked on reset, you will have to enter Windows 8 Consumer Preview product key, so after entering the same click on Next, accept the license terms and proceed with further on screen instruction for completing the resetting process.

[VARIJ]

There’s another way of resetting windows 8, the above method is for resetting at boot but you can try resetting from within Windows 8 as well.

• First login with administrator account, connect your Windows 8 installation DVD or USB thumb drive, open Control Panel, click on Recovery icon and click on a hyper linked line saying ”If you're experiencing problems with your PC, you can refresh it in PC settings”
• Now click on General > Get started below Remove everything and reinstall Windows. If you are prompted by UAC then click on yes, click on Next and choose “Only the drive where windows is installed” or “All drives” accordingly and proceed.
• You will now get “Thorough” and “Quick” option, so chose one of the option and proceed.
• Rest all method is same as mentioned in above steps.