Most computer come with one power button. If your computer is off, press it to boot your computer up. if your computer is on, press it to shut it down. Hold it for around 8 seconds for emergency shutdown in case your computer freeze (this way is better than unplug your power cord and get your laptop's battery out—this will harm your hard disk drive)…

If you don't like to press the shut down button to shut your HP down, just go to start menu and select "shutdown". Or… click on your desktop, then Hold down the Alt key and press F4, and select Shutdown.

Additionally, you may set the shut down button to tell your computer to shutdown/sleep/hibernate/do nothing by go to Control Panel, Power Setting, and change the "what does the power button do" (or something like that) option if you are running Vista or Win7.

Hope it helps you a bit.

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