"Windows is shutting down" forever

ImWolf

ImWolf

Has anyone else dealt with this XP problem where you want to restart the machine, and you look at a blue screen telling you "Windows Is Shutting Down" for much longer then you would think required (15 or 20 minutes) before the system finally reboots?

This seems to get more annoying the longer the OS has been installed, and while I'm waiting patiently for the BIOS splash screen to pop up I don't see any HDD activity (flickering light).... just nothing happening at all.

Virus? Malware? Too many "services"? One rogue crappy software?

The last time I did a fresh install was a few years ago, but I do recall that this problem was non-existent afterwards. But as before, it slowly became more pronounced over time.

Any input would be appreciated....

Wolf
 
I have had this happen before and it would appear to be something still open in the background, but I could never find it
I would just shut down manually, run chkdsk, then a quick scan and everything would be back to normal. No virus found when scanned. Hope this helps even though it is not really a solution, I have tried to find out what is being kept open, but I have not installed any thing new for a while. :)
 
Thanks Elizabeth... my impression was also that something is still running in the background and updating before proceeding with the restart, but the symptoms don't really back this up. Something I failed to mention in the OP is that the delay time is also dependent on how long the system was running prior to a restart. If I choose to restart in short intervals then the process goes fairly quick. However, if the system had been left running for many days or weeks, then the "Windows Is Shutting Down" screen will hang for much longer.

And if indeed something is updating, I would expect to see and hear HDD activity, which I don't.
 
secpar said:
Do you have the computer set to clear the pagefile at shutdown/restart?
Click to expand...
I don't see where there's an option for clearing the pagefile. In any case, I don't think it should take very long to delete (clear) even a 4G file.
 
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