XP Takes an eternity to Reset/Shut Down

It will stay at the desktop for sever MINUTES, then go to the "logging off" screen for a minute or two, and then will finally reset/shut off.

Anyone know what could be causing this?

(My computer doesn't run slow at any other times)

 

Do you have a lot of stuff in your notification area?

You may have something running that takes a while to shut down.

You can use msconfig to uncheck some startup items to find which one is slowing your shutdown.

Mine takes longer now that I'm trying out NOD32 anti virus programs which put three icons on the notification area at startup.

 

Notification area?

No clue what that is unless you're talking about the list of processes/applications in the Task Manager

 

Notification area is on the right of the taskbar (with the clock)

Quick launch is on the left of the taskbar (if you have it activated). It is used for short cuts to programs or files that you want to see without closing open windows.

When you open programs, a representation of them appears in the space between the two areas.

The notification area can be really loaded with icons of the open programs and processes. The more that are there, the longer it would take windows to shut down. Especially if some of them have to perform some functions before they can be shut down.

In order to see what is holding up the shutdown process, you can use msconfig from the run command to stop some things from loading in order to see what function is slowing you down.

 

All I have in the notification is AIM (which I close before shutting down, the clock, a weather service program (which I close), a manager for my video card (where I can select resolutions, which is rather useless, so I close it), and the sound level manager.

As far as what's in MSconfig, there's a hell of a lot of stuff that I'm not sure what it does. I don't want to accidentally shut down a vital part of my system from booting up (of which there's 16 things that load on XP's start)

 

If you open msconfig, click selective startup and uncheck "load startup items ". Reboot and then shut down and see if that helps. If not then go back to msconfig and choose normal startup. Problem is somewhere else.

If it does help, you can add back startup items until it happens again. It could be a lot of starting and shutting down but this may surround your problem.

Let us know how it's going....

 

Hi.

Check this url for some answers. It is a very good check list of things to look at when XP shuts down very slow.

http://www.aumha.org/a/shtdwnxp.htm

Look particularly at "Shutdown: Clear Virtual memory pagefile.â€

That will make the hard drive just sit there and run quietly for some time clearing the pagefile. Doesn't need to do that at all.

Go down the list carefully to see if anything applies to your hardware or setup.

 

I myself have been having a similar problem with my other PC having the same shutdown problem except it runs Win2k. I found during my search for an answer someone had posted this same problem in another forum and it was mentioned...

I removed the patch Q329170 and now have no shutdown problems. The patch in question was applied to WinXP and Win2k boxes so if you installed this patch this my be your culprit. Try uninstalling it and see if it helps.

 

giles

I went to the site you posted and my slow reboot/shutdown is fixed.

I had turned on the option to clear the pagefile on shutdown. Turning it off made a normal reboot time.

Start>run>type gpedit.msc.....dbl click Computer Configuration>Windows Settings>Security Settings>Local Policies>Security Option..In the right pane, scroll down to "Shutdown: Clear virtual memory pagefile ". Dbl click and select Disable.

I had selected enable at one time and forgot about it.

Thanks for the link.

 

Way to go. That was what it sounded like. My computer boots up in 47 seconds and shutsdown an average of 9 seconds. Sometimes it takes longer but not often. Glad to help.