Problem with power button - has to be pressed multiple times until laptop boots

[sumeriance]

Alright guys, prepare for a somewhat lengthy explanation about my problem and what I did before it appeared and why.


The Problem:

Laptop's power button doesn't wanna work with me. If I shut down the laptop, it takes several presses to turn it on again and most of the time I have to press the power button for a while/wiggle my finger a bit while pressing to get it to work. Same thing obviously occurs with hibernate, because the power button needs to be pressed for the laptop to wake up.

This doesn't happen when instead of shutting down, I choose to reboot it, as it boots automatically so there's no problem with booting it like that.



Here's what I did before(and after) this problem occurred:

I'm not quite sure if what I did actually relates to this issue, but just in case, I'm gonna tell anyway.

The laptop had just finished downloading windows updates and so I was going to turn it off and let it install the updates before turning off, as they usually do. There were 13 updates to install, and all went fine at first, but when it started to install the thirteenth aka the last update, it just went on and on and on, I'm pretty sure it froze, because I waited for 1 and a half hours and pretty much nothing was happening. To my recollection, it wasn't even that big of an update.

So, frustrated, I pressed down the power button to force a shutdown. This might've been my first mistake. If my memory's correct, this is when the power button problem appeared. (Might've also been the shut down after that, I was also updating video card drivers)

I turned it on again, and even tho I had forced a shutdown before it finished installing the last update, it still seemed to do/change some stuff with the registry, so I thought that maybe the other updates were installed successfully. When it finished doing whatever to the registry it was doing, it let me log in, and I went to check if the updates were installed. Well, they apparently had failed to install, so I choose to install them again, and they did, pretty quickly and without needing to restart the laptop(I was kinda weirded out by that).

Now, it was after this that I proceeded to update the video card drivers and stuff, and I mostly chose to reboot rather than just shut down, so I didn't think much of the power-button issue, but then it persisted, when I had trouble waking it up from hibernation.

What I did next was perhaps my second mistake: I decided to try a system restore. Well, I chose a restore point that was created automatically before those 13 updates were installed. It seemed to go well, but then I made the mistake of leaving the room, and during the time I was gone it finished restoring the system, rebooted, and apparently it rebooted straight into start-up repair. Well I let it run, and try to fix whatever it was trying to fix, I didn't even know what. After it was done, it rebooted and turned on normally and so I logged in. Aaand it immediately informed me that the system restore had failed, due to an error "0xc0000022".

So the system restore didn't help, and the power button problem persists still.

Any ideas what exactly went wrong? Could it simply be a malfunctioning power button? Failing battery? Something I did? Any ideas at all? Up to this point, I've had no problems with the laptop, so I don't think it's a faulty motherboard or hard drive(then again you can never be sure).

This wouldn't be such a big problem but I kinda fear that eventually, it'll just refuse to turn on no matter how much I press the button.

Here's some specs if you need them:

Asus N73SV
Win 7 Professional 64-bit

8 gigs ddr3, 798MHz
Intel Core i5 2430M, 2.40GHz
Intel HD Graphics 3000
NVIDIA GeForce GT 540M
465GB Hitachi SATA drive

 

[NerdyComputerGuy]

Hey,

Most likely a hardware problem, in order words A power button issue. Did you push down exceptionally hard on the button when you force turned it off?

The Windows Update's most likely corrupted the computer, well the computer still works but I think that the restore file got corrupted. Create a restore point now so if anything else goes wrong you can go back.

You could also create a system image and copy it onto a USB stick so if anything ever goes wrong with the OS again then you can completely restore your computer back to 2 weeks ago for example and have it working again.

Again, the power button is most likely hardware related, See if you can take the laptop down to a local computer repair shop and have them examine the laptop.

 

[sumeriance]

Hey,

Most likely a hardware problem, in order words A power button issue. Did you push down exceptionally hard on the button when you force turned it off?

The Windows Update's most likely corrupted the computer, well the computer still works but I think that the restore file got corrupted. Create a restore point now so if anything else goes wrong you can go back.

You could also create a system image and copy it onto a USB stick so if anything ever goes wrong with the OS again then you can completely restore your computer back to 2 weeks ago for example and have it working again.

Again, the power button is most likely hardware related, See if you can take the laptop down to a local computer repair shop and have them examine the laptop.

Mm, I was kinda afraid of that. I did use some force when I pushed down the button, but not really more force than what I usually use. At least, to my recollection. Not that I'm saying that it wasn't a probable culprit, I do think it's entirely possible that the force was enough to make it malfunction.

I did, however, manage to come up with a workaround for the power button issue: I boot the laptop using the Express Gate key (thank god my laptop has one). I googled for hours and discovered that if you have the Express Gate installed(I didn't, but it was fairly simple to download and install), you can press the key when the laptop is turned off and it boots into a kind of a mini operating system, and then from there, the laptop can be booted to Windows. Tried it, and it worked! Also worked as a way to wake it up from hibernation. Might not be a permanent solution, but will work for now.

About those updates, yesterday evening the laptop attempted to install the same updates again, and to my relief, this time they were installed successfully!

I am definitely going to make another restore point and probably also a system image as soon as I can, just in case. Tho I reeaally can't afford to take it to be repaired at the moment, I think using the Express Gate key will work until I actually have enough money to have someone fix it.

Thanks for the advice!

 

[NerdyComputerGuy]

Yeah, if the Express Gate key thing is working and you're happy don't spend any money on fixing the button since it's not really a good use of money and won't really improve anything realistically since the issue isn't really an annoyance (since you have the Gate key now).