Laptop not shutting down

[crystal28]

My laptop with WIN XP in it has not been shutting down properly for the last week or so,everytime i try to log off and then shut down and even that doesnt shut it down,i have to manually power off by pressing the start button for few seconds.I am not comfortable doing this and want to know what i need to do for it to shut down.
I cleaned up all Temp Files,Unwanted Cookies,History folder and all junk but still it wont shut down.

 

[electronicsfreak]

Have you looked at what all is running in msconfig?

 

[BFOJ]

Does it shutdown properly in Safe Mode? If so, then like electronicsfreak suggested, check the startup programs in msconfig, disabling them all or a few at a time until you isolate the source of the problem.

 

[mainegeek]

kalyan28,
Also look at Internet Options, Setting, View Objects and remove any damaged objects. Sounds like a program is failing to close which could be causing the system to hang at shutdown. Probably wouldn't hurt to schedule a disk check.(aka ScanDisk)

 

[MonkeyX]

Just a thought... I have usually had this problem when a driver hangs and fails to unload from memory. Had you done any driver/ Windows updates prior to this? The other thing to check, as this is a laptop, is the power management settings to make sure nothing has changed there. I have done that when manually editing (ie. learning why you shouldn't mess with) the .config files on linux system before.

 

[BFOJ]

Another suggestion. Temporarily disable your Shutdown sound.

 

[PockyBum522]

Also, to make you a little more comfortable, usually when it hangs it's not going to be accessing the hard drive, which is the only reason you can't just turn off your computer in the middle of using it.

I've been very bad about turning off computer without shutting down many times over the years, and I've never had a drive have problems. There was also a study done about this I read, stating that you don't really need to worry about it, although once you get it working you obviously want to do it the right way.