Slow shutdown

[Mayhem]

Wondering if anyone can throw some light or ideas into a problem with the PC currently... it's Win XP Home SP2 with all critical patches on.

More precisely it seems to shutdown very slowly. If you click Start -> Turn Off Computer, then it can take 1-2 mins for the box with "Log off/Shutdown/Restart" to appear. However having clicked a button, it goes through the procedure at normal speed. Until it reaches the final blue screen and displays "Windows is shutting down". Then it can take 2-5 mins to actually turn off.

The problem is, it isn't a 100% occuring problem. It only seems to happen if the PC has been on for a while, say a few hours. If you boot it up and then immediately go to shutdown, it will do so without problem. So something is deciding not to quit quietly, and only crops up with prolonged use. Maybe. Could be AOL for all I know, but people only have the PC on for long periods to go surfing

So if you need to know anything about what is installed, I can answer...

[AlwaysAce]

run ad-aware everyday as i find this helps my system loads, i used to have the same thing happen to me.

also defrag regular.

[Mayhem]

I do. There's nothing being picked up by Adaware, Spybot or Microsoft Antispy. I ran a defrag fairly recently, and rerunning it told me the drive didn't need it.

I have a feeling for some reason a process is not wanting to shutdown when I want to stop the PC and that's what is holding things up.

I have installed on the system (aside from the above): Office 2000, Kerio, Photoshop 7, Acrobat 7, of anything major I could note. There was Norton 2005 but was taken off in the last couple of days as it was having a few problems. But the issue with the slow shutdown started before I took it off.

[AlwaysAce]

yeah i was having problems with ccApp(part or norton) not shutting down properly, and it caused my system to hang for ages before shutting down.


hmmm.......have you set any recent restore points?

[kernow]

how long has windows been on there?

a format would sort it out, so it can happen in six months again



I just gave up trying to battle windows with spyware and virus tools, you spend more time doing that than anything else on your computer.

[VR46]

Mayhem how about taking a screenshot of the "running processes" when the PC has only just started up and another when it's been on for a good few hours just to see if there is a difference.

[mid]

Shutting down means not only stopping all the programs, but flushing all the caches to disk and cleaning up swap memory. A few days work can make that take a while here, too.

[The_G_Man]

Had the exact same problem. It seems to be an AOL and Norton problem. I uninstalled Norton then re-installed it. My Pc is running fine now.

Let us know how you get on.

[SubparMario]

I'm pretty sure that there is a registry tweak to stop this from happening. I've read it in a few XP tweaking guides.

It's something along the lines of setting the time in seconds/milliseconds that running processes will be given before they're automatically killed once you initiate a shutdown. Should be easy enough to find.

[Mayhem]

Yeah I did reinstall Norton and it was still causing a bit of trouble so I took it off again. And I did flush everything out of the system as per the Symantec site, so hopefully there are no hooks left.

The PC isn't left on for days btw... just maybe it may stretch to 10-12 hours. I figure it's a memory leak and something just need clearing. But then it's been on for that period before without trouble; only in the last couple of weeks has it been struggling when shutting down.

I'll take a look into what you suggested Wush...

[neoboy259]

Try downloading a little program called tunexp 1.5 and from within that enabling fast shutdown.

hth

[SubparMario]

Wasn't sure if I had applied the tweak to this new system myself so I tracked down the method. Maybe the program mentioned above does this for you

Increasing shutdown speed by reducing wait times part 1

Windows XP stores a couple of values in its registry which are responsible for determining how long to wait before shutting down (killing) open applications and services once the shutdown command has been given.

By editing these two settings and changing them to lower values, you can considerably decrease the amount of time that Windows XP needs to successfully shut itself down. The first part of this tweak deals with setting the amount of time Windows will take to kill open applications on shutdown.

Open REGEDIT and navigate to 'HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\ Desktop\'
Highlight the 'WaitToKillAppTimeout' value.
Set it to '1000' (the default should be 20000).
Now highlight the 'HungAppTimeout' value
Set it to '1000' also.

Increasing shutdown speed by reducing wait times part 2

The second part of this tip changes the same settings, this time for all users on the system.

Open REGEDIT and navigate to 'HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\ Desktop'
Highlight the 'WaitToKillAppTimeout' value.
Set it to '1000' (the default should be 20000).
Now highlight the 'HungAppTimeout' value.
Set it to '1000' also.

Increasing shutdown speed by reducing wait times part 3

In the third part of this tip, we will alter a second registry setting to decrease the amount of time Windows XP will wait before shutting down active services after receiving a shut down command.

Open REGEDIT and navigate to 'HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Contr ol\'

Highlight the value 'WaitToKillServiceTimeout'

Change this value to '1000.'

This should help to considerably speed up the time windows XP takes to shut itself down.

[Boomah]

I had this problem. It was because my recycle bin had 1000's of files in it. I cleared it and fast shut down again!