Win XP Pro SP1 takes forever to shut down/restart

[meckeard]

Hi all,

I have a Dell Optiplex GX260 with Windows XP Pro SP1. It has a 2.0 GHZ CPU with 768 megs of RAM.

About a 3 weeks ago I noticed that when I shut down or restart, it takes a very long time to complete.

I see the usual messages about closing network connections and saving settings. After these dissapear, the screen seems to hang. I don't know the actual time it takes to reboot, as I never stick around that long. But it does finish.

Any ideas as to why my PC hangs?

Thanks,
Mark

 

[ricefd]

I'm not an expert as much as the others on this forum but have you done the basics like defrag and scandisk.
Also do you have any spyware removal programs.
Usually I find spyware to be responsible for this problem.

 

[outonalimb]

Try the following excellent link:

http://www.theeldergeek.com/shutdown_issues_in_xp.htm

 

[LaughingLizard99]

Generally, this is a consequence of software that is running when shutdown is attempted. It may also have something to do with particular hardware. Be sure to close all running programs before shutting down. If this solves your problem then you can determine, by trial and error, which programs are involved. One other thing comes to mind, if you are using an NVidia video card and the NVidia Driver Helper service, try stopping the service by launching SERVICES.MSC from a Run box.

 

[jimp56]

we use GX260's and use Win2K, but ours do the same thing. In our case, I am fairly certain its because the system is flushing the pagefile prior to shutting down.

When you are shutting down, during that "hanging" time, look at your hard drive access light (picture of a can under the power button with light next to it) and see if it stays solid green right up until the time of shutdown.

to disable this, see the following:

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=314834

Only in your case, if it IS set to 1, you want to disable by setting it to 0. reboot, and shut down again to notice if it makes any difference.

If the key doesnt exist, or is set to 0, then the problem lies elsewhere. Perhaps a roaming profile timeout problem(happened a lot with wink in a domain environment, not so sure about winxp).