Hi everyone,
I'm turning to this forum as I think I need some specialized help with my Windows XP shutdown issues. I have a copy of Windows XP SP3 that runs off of a 16 GB compact flash disk. The computer has 1 GB of RAM and uses a 500 MHz processor. It's a single board computer that runs the software to collect data from a weather instrument. There are very few peripherals that are attached to the computer (USB, VGA, ethernet port). The most unique peripheral attached to the computer is an analog to digital converter (ADC) that interprets the analog signals produced by the instrument.
The instrument works fine so far, but our primary issue is with the shutdown process of Windows XP. Shutdown proceeds as normal, but once the Windows XP window closes showing the "Windows is shutting down...", all that's left is the blue background and the cursor (see attached images). The mouse is responsive, but I cannot do any control-alt-delete commands. To turn off the computer, a manual switch must be hit. This happens regardless of whether or not I have logged onto the machine.
I've been doing some troubleshooting based on what I've found on the Internet, but I'm at a loss as to what may be causing these shutdown issues. I get the sense that this is a software issue, as when the computer is booted into Windows XP Safe Mode (with and without networking enabled) the computer shuts down just fine. I've been working my way through disabling various services and drivers on the machine in an attempt to isolate the reason the shutdown hangs, but I haven't had much success. So far, I've tried the following:
1.) Uninstalling the ADC drivers.
2.) Disabling the various services (tasklist /svc) to try to replicate the set of the services that are running during Safe Mode. I wrote a .bat script to shutdown all of the services individually prior to shutdown. I can get all of them shutdown except for the LSASS.EXE SamSs service, which doesn't appear to respond to a "net stop SamSs" command.
3.) Disabled the audio shutdown sounds through the Control Panel.
4.) Run chkdsk.
5.) Defragmented the hard drive.
This computer isn't attached to the Internet, so I'm pretty sure it isn't some form of malware that is causing the shutdown to hang. Does anyone have any advice or suggestions of alternative things I could try? I'm not keen on doing a reinstall of Windows, as I'd have to try to dig up a copy of MS Visual C++ 2010 (to get the data collection software compiled again) and figure out how to re-attach a CD drive to the computer in order to get the OS reinstalled (although a USB boot option appears doable). I appreciate any help you can provide - this issue is driving me up a wall.
I'm turning to this forum as I think I need some specialized help with my Windows XP shutdown issues. I have a copy of Windows XP SP3 that runs off of a 16 GB compact flash disk. The computer has 1 GB of RAM and uses a 500 MHz processor. It's a single board computer that runs the software to collect data from a weather instrument. There are very few peripherals that are attached to the computer (USB, VGA, ethernet port). The most unique peripheral attached to the computer is an analog to digital converter (ADC) that interprets the analog signals produced by the instrument.
The instrument works fine so far, but our primary issue is with the shutdown process of Windows XP. Shutdown proceeds as normal, but once the Windows XP window closes showing the "Windows is shutting down...", all that's left is the blue background and the cursor (see attached images). The mouse is responsive, but I cannot do any control-alt-delete commands. To turn off the computer, a manual switch must be hit. This happens regardless of whether or not I have logged onto the machine.
I've been doing some troubleshooting based on what I've found on the Internet, but I'm at a loss as to what may be causing these shutdown issues. I get the sense that this is a software issue, as when the computer is booted into Windows XP Safe Mode (with and without networking enabled) the computer shuts down just fine. I've been working my way through disabling various services and drivers on the machine in an attempt to isolate the reason the shutdown hangs, but I haven't had much success. So far, I've tried the following:
1.) Uninstalling the ADC drivers.
2.) Disabling the various services (tasklist /svc) to try to replicate the set of the services that are running during Safe Mode. I wrote a .bat script to shutdown all of the services individually prior to shutdown. I can get all of them shutdown except for the LSASS.EXE SamSs service, which doesn't appear to respond to a "net stop SamSs" command.
3.) Disabled the audio shutdown sounds through the Control Panel.
4.) Run chkdsk.
5.) Defragmented the hard drive.
This computer isn't attached to the Internet, so I'm pretty sure it isn't some form of malware that is causing the shutdown to hang. Does anyone have any advice or suggestions of alternative things I could try? I'm not keen on doing a reinstall of Windows, as I'd have to try to dig up a copy of MS Visual C++ 2010 (to get the data collection software compiled again) and figure out how to re-attach a CD drive to the computer in order to get the OS reinstalled (although a USB boot option appears doable). I appreciate any help you can provide - this issue is driving me up a wall.
