XP with SP3 not shutting down

Hi,

I am trying to shut down my windows XP machine however for some reason it starts shutting down and then hangs on the 'Windows is shutting down' screen. Restarting the system works fine and it has SP3 installed.

May someone kindly advise me what I can do?

Thanks and Regards

Alan

 

Is it a new installation or did you upgrade from a previous version ?

 

I basically upgraded from SP2 to SP3 it is not a new installation. However I installed SP3 after the shut down problem occurred. I thought that there might be a patch that might solve the issue.

 

Applying a service pack to a wobbly system is not recommended as the update may not solve the old problems & may even create new ones.

What does it say in Event Manager ?

 

Also try ...
Restart computer in "Safe Mode "
Now shut computer down.
If computer closes properly with no hanging, problem is most likely a third party program/process/driver not closing, releasing properly.
If it continues to hang in Safe Mode, then I would suspect a system level process.

Additional trouble shoots
Also, do you have any USB devices attached (example printer) attached at all times. If yes, properly release all USB device(s) from computer, shut device off and try a couple of reboots for effect.