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For an art exhibition I have a mini PC with Windows 10 with SSD harddisk playing permanently a looped video.

When the museum closes in the evening all power in the building is cut off. In most cases it will be not possible for the personnel to shut down the mini PC correctly before the power is cut off.

I tested such power cuts several times and there was never a problem. But when this happens on a daily basis for many months can the Windows system be corrupted or can other problems occur?

PS 1: I was thinking to use an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) System to shut down the PC correctly. Unfortunately the installation space is too limited to put an UPS. So I cannot use this option.

PS 2: When the power comes back on the PC will boot automatically and start the media player to play the video. So this is working fine.

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    A similar question was asked ~2hrs ago with an answer there you may wish to implement. A UPS (pure sine wave only) would be ideal to cleanly shutdown the OS, as a flag is set within a specific configuration file in a subdirectory of %WinDir% when a dirty shutdown occurs (this is also why after a dirty shutdown the OS should be rebooted normally to clear the flag); every time Windows boots, it reads this file prior to presenting the GUI for user interaction. Repeatedly/always performing a dirty shutdown will lead to filesystem corruption.
    – JW0914
    May 19, 2022 at 15:34
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    A UPS will shut it down, but sensibly for an installation you don't want to be running any type of 'computer' you want a hardware player that will not mind having the power dumped every day & will start playing within 30s of power being re-applied. [Background, I used to supervise thousands of such players, plus a whole bunch of computers trying to do the same task… badly;)
    – Tetsujin
    May 19, 2022 at 15:54
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    I've been away from the industry too long to know what's current, sorry. We used to have our own built for us in China, so I never was really involved in the B2B market for them. They do exist, as this is big business now. Every store, every train station & bus stop has one these days. They seem to market them these days as 'digital signage' rather than 'media players'. I found some budget alternatives googling "budget digital media video player"
    – Tetsujin
    May 19, 2022 at 16:17
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    @user3384674 Why not create a scheduled task that shuts down the PC at a specific time? rawinfopages.com/tips/2016/01/…
    – Cpt.Whale
    May 19, 2022 at 16:27
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    You might look at this search, for example. My TV has a US$35 player connected. That said, the player might not restart on its own. You might also put the OS and app for the mini-PC on a flash card (e.g., xD) that has a read-only switch. Easy to do with Linux, problematic for Windows or Mac. May 19, 2022 at 17:19

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