BRS is a standard acronym, because early IBM mainframes all had one. Yours probably won't be red, and because most new ones are only a "signal" switch and don't actually disconnect the power you may have to hold a button down for several seconds before you get a shutdown.

Windows loads a lot of stuff into temporary memory while it's running, and there can be huge numbers of bits in RAM, temporary space, and hard drive read/write buffers that will all be lost if you BRS down.

If you use Start|Shutdown, (Control-Escape also works, or the "Windows Key") and "request" a shutdown, all the temporary stuff is safely tucked back onto permanent memory spaces, all the running processes are shut down, and only then the power is shut off.

Since the "Power Button" on most computers now doesn't actually cut the power, it's possible for some computers to do some "cleanup" before the power actually is turned off; but using the recommended shutdown procedure via Start is still recommended.

The obvious irritating factor in a BRS shutdown is that the next boot should always take you to an ABEND (Abnormal End of Processes) screen that asks if you want to open Windows normally or want a Safe Boot.

A similar situation occurs with external USB devices. Some, but not all, devices need to be "disconnected" using the icon that should be in the Startup Tray (normally at the bottom right). The icon usually sort of looks like a "USB Plug" with a white check in a green circle. If you hover a mouse pointer on it, it should show "Safely Remove Hardware." If you don't click there and then click on the device you want to unplug - and get the message "It is now safe to remove ..." - you may have trouble getting the device to reconnect properly. A reboot of the computer usually will clear the problem, if you should happen to do an "improper disconnect" but repeated improper disconnects can scramble your USB controllers' data base where it keeps track of what USB devices it thinks are connected. Then you get annoying error messages.

If you must disconnect a USB device that the "Safely Remove" button says you can't "because it's in use" the safest procedure is to shut down the computer (Start|Shutdown) to assure that all running processes are "safely closed," disconnect the device with the computer OFF, and then restart.

The most common "undisconnectable" USB device is probably an external hard drive that's had "Index files for faster searching" set in drive properties. It takes about three months for Windows to index a new drive loaded with 300GB of files, and it will be "busy" until it's done. If you turn off the indexing, it may take an hour or more for it to "reset attributes" before it's done and will allow you to (safely) disconnect. Whether the drive is indexed or not, if a drive has more than about 100GB of data on it, Vista search will NEVER return a useful result, so you can take your pick about whether to let a drive be indexed (IMO).

John