My Win 11 PC will neither shutdown or restart witout using the power button

Version 22 H2. Every time I have to perform a hard shutdown with the OFF button The HDD light stays on but the computer light stays on

Turn off Windows fast startup to see if it makes any difference:

You wrote, " The HDD light stays on but the computer light stays on" is that a typo?

When shutting down Windows turn off the screen first and after a few seconds power off the computer. In your case the screen turns off but then something goes wrong and cannot complete the shutdown. This can be a faulty driver that the system cannot release to proceed or a stuck application that doesn't allow the system to shutdown. I would first update all the drivers.

See if this helps. How to Shut Down or Restart the Computer With a Batch File

If an application cannot terminate properly or a device driver keeps the system busy, it is stuck waiting for ever and doesn't shutdown. You have to fix any issues. First try upgrading the drivers. Then fixing any system issues using the sfc /scannow command.

kelper said:

You wrote, " The HDD light stays on but the computer light stays on" is that a typo?

Click to expand...

My apologies, it is indeed a typo, I meant to say the HDD/SSD light stops flickering eventually but the power light for the PC stays on. Another suggestion I had was to type the following command 'Powercfg -h off' into an administrative DOS box, I did that but it did not work.

Are you sure it's still on? Could the light you see be just telling you the charger is connected? Can you start in safe mode and see if it shuts down correctly? Or boot from a bootable USB and see?