The mystery of the shutdown crashes appears to be over now. I thought I'd post this message to advise those who had helped me what the problem and solution was.
My very long thread started some weeks ago was frustrating me no end in my attempts to resolve the strange crashing during shutdown. The error message usually contained a reference to "winlogon.exe", and it seemed that the shutdown process was losing permission to access necessary system files during the shutdown. The was confirmed by often logging off first, before shutting down, and this reduced the crashes significantly.
And, anytime I booted up, and then immediately shut down, no crash ever occurred. So I played around with all Startup programs, but never found any thing which seemed to be involved. And, I had added no hardware in quite a while, so I didn't think hardware was the problem
And, several times I thought it was resolved after a number of days with no crashes, but they always reappeared.
Well, earlier this month, after 3 days of no crashes, a crash occurred. But I had really done nothing except turn on my Minolta Color Laser printer 2300DL to print a color document. It was working perfectly, as was the monitor utility to check supplies status. So I rebooted, and left the printer off, and the shut down was OK. I rebooted, turned on the 2300DL, and shutdown, and the crash occurred. The cause of the crashes looked promising.
That printer is normally not turned on, unless I want to do some color printing, as I use a Brother MFC B/W laser printer for most of my usual B/W printing. And the Minolts is usually not used during routine activities.
So I completely uninstalled both copies of the 2300DL, and reinstalled a single copy, using the latest full install file, which would also install the supplies status utility. Historically, that printer was always a bear to install, through several computers. And through the years, it would periodically start "acting up", and require an uninstall, and reinstall.
And again, it took me a couple of install/uninstall cycles until it came through properly. But for some reason, the supplies status utility didn't make it through the process, when it finally seemed to be OK in all other resepcts. So I left it at that.
After this final install, I went through the processes of booting up, turning the printer on, using it, shutting down, et al, several times. There were no crashes. And, it is now 10 days with no crashes. All seems to be working perfectly normally. No crazy symptoms are around any more, and I don't cross my fingers when shutting down anymore.
The strange part is that the printer was working just fine when the problem started, and all along afterwards, right up to when I did the uninstalls et al.
Can anyone offer any explanation how an installed printer can cause the shutdown crashes? It sure puzzles me. It may have been configured to "not share" on the original install. On this latest install, I set it to share - would that make any difference?
And thanks again to all those who spent lots of time helping me, especially Linney and BigBadBen.
Ron Hirsch
My very long thread started some weeks ago was frustrating me no end in my attempts to resolve the strange crashing during shutdown. The error message usually contained a reference to "winlogon.exe", and it seemed that the shutdown process was losing permission to access necessary system files during the shutdown. The was confirmed by often logging off first, before shutting down, and this reduced the crashes significantly.
And, anytime I booted up, and then immediately shut down, no crash ever occurred. So I played around with all Startup programs, but never found any thing which seemed to be involved. And, I had added no hardware in quite a while, so I didn't think hardware was the problem
And, several times I thought it was resolved after a number of days with no crashes, but they always reappeared.
Well, earlier this month, after 3 days of no crashes, a crash occurred. But I had really done nothing except turn on my Minolta Color Laser printer 2300DL to print a color document. It was working perfectly, as was the monitor utility to check supplies status. So I rebooted, and left the printer off, and the shut down was OK. I rebooted, turned on the 2300DL, and shutdown, and the crash occurred. The cause of the crashes looked promising.
That printer is normally not turned on, unless I want to do some color printing, as I use a Brother MFC B/W laser printer for most of my usual B/W printing. And the Minolts is usually not used during routine activities.
So I completely uninstalled both copies of the 2300DL, and reinstalled a single copy, using the latest full install file, which would also install the supplies status utility. Historically, that printer was always a bear to install, through several computers. And through the years, it would periodically start "acting up", and require an uninstall, and reinstall.
And again, it took me a couple of install/uninstall cycles until it came through properly. But for some reason, the supplies status utility didn't make it through the process, when it finally seemed to be OK in all other resepcts. So I left it at that.
After this final install, I went through the processes of booting up, turning the printer on, using it, shutting down, et al, several times. There were no crashes. And, it is now 10 days with no crashes. All seems to be working perfectly normally. No crazy symptoms are around any more, and I don't cross my fingers when shutting down anymore.
The strange part is that the printer was working just fine when the problem started, and all along afterwards, right up to when I did the uninstalls et al.
Can anyone offer any explanation how an installed printer can cause the shutdown crashes? It sure puzzles me. It may have been configured to "not share" on the original install. On this latest install, I set it to share - would that make any difference?
And thanks again to all those who spent lots of time helping me, especially Linney and BigBadBen.
Ron Hirsch