My Windows XP takes literally 5 mintues to shut down... Any Ideas?

N

-=Nu||=-

Gawd
Joined
Jan 5, 2002
Messages
974
I have Windows XP Professional installed on my computer, and for some reason it takes forver to shut down (like 5 minutes). It wasn't always like this, it used to be fine, but for some reason, and I don't know exaclty when or why, it started taking forever to shutdown lately, it starts up fine, and everything else works just fine. Does anybody have any ideas as to why this is?

And here are my specs:

Abit NF7-S
Athlon XP 2600+ @ 3200+
1gb OCZ Platinum low latency RAM
XFX GeForce 6800GT
 
linjy2 said:
defrag? get rid of spywares? virus scan?
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Yeah do what he said. If you want to speed up the shutdown time, just unplug the cord from the back, instead of having Windows shut it down :D
 
I dont think it's spyware or viruses, but I just ran Spybot and Adaware and they found nothing (well actually adaware found one file, but it wasnt really spyware anyways), I guess I can run a virus scan, but I'm fairly sure this has something to do with Windows itself.
 
Lazy_Moron said:
Yeah do what he said. If you want to speed up the shutdown time, just unplug the cord from the back, instead of having Windows shut it down :D
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I would do that, except I don't know how much Windows would like that...
 
Meh, it probably be ok for a while, then Windows will start to not like it, and give you more problems.

Maybe its hard drive related, like a bad sector or something like that. Try running that one Windows Utility, that checks for errors on the hard drive when you boot up the computer. Maybe Windows is corrupt itself.
 
This is what happens when a process freezes and refuses to shut down when you are attempting to shut down your computer. You get one or two like that and the (stupidly long) time out that they have built in will keep your computer on.

I dont know it off the top of my head, but there was a registry key that controlled the timeout time. My guess is that tweaking that could help shutdown times.

Remember, thats only a bandaid; to compleatly fix the problem you would have to figure out what process is freezing at shutdown.
 
Unknown-One said:
This is what happens when a process freezes and refuses to shut down when you are attempting to shut down your computer. You get one or two like that and the (stupidly long) time out that they have built in will keep your computer on.

I dont know it off the top of my head, but there was a registry key that controlled the timeout time. My guess is that tweaking that could help shutdown times.

Remember, thats only a bandaid; to compleatly fix the problem you would have to figure out what process is freezing at shutdown.
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Do you know how I would go about figuring that out?
 
I think I figured it out, my paging file was set to 1.5gb for some reason (I don't know what I was thinking) and I resized it to 500-700mb on one of my faster drives, and now it shuts down in like 10 seconds. Thanks for all the suggestions though!
 
The Windows Event Viewer should keep a log of what programs crashed/needed to be killed.
You can find the event viewer by fallowing the path below (when the Control Panel is in “Category View”
“Control Panel\Performance and Maintenance\Administrative Tools\Event Viewer”

I recommend clearing the log, and rebooting, when you log back in, the only entries should be from the program(s) that were giving it trouble at shutdown :D


Edit: I see that you fixed it...thats a strange fix though :confused:
 
I've seen this problem before and this may apply to you. I have seen systems using motherboards with Nvidia chipsets along Nvidia cards display the same problem you have. The easiest way to find out if this is the problem. Uninstall you graphic card drivers. If the problem goes away, then that was the problem. Sometimes the drivers seem to fight and hold up the system.

I have always found this right after windows gets installed. It is very hit or miss and I fix it by just reinstalling windows, and never had it happen more than once on a set up.
 
-=Nu||=- said:
I think I figured it out, my paging file was set to 1.5gb for some reason (I don't know what I was thinking) and I resized it to 500-700mb on one of my faster drives, and now it shuts down in like 10 seconds. Thanks for all the suggestions though!
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There's nothing wrong with having your paging file that big. I have mine set at 1.5GB. As long as you don't use more than about 5-10% of the hard drive I don't think that would cause a problem. Moving it to a faster drive is probably what solved the problem, not decreasing the size. Unless of course you have a small hard drive like less than 20GB or something.

Oh, and set the min. and max. page file size at the same setting. Setting them different means that, when your programs need more than the min. size, Windows will make it bigger. There's nothing wrong with that, except that usually the only time you need more than 500MBs of page file is when you're playing a memory-hogging game like BF2, folding in the background, with several other progarms running in the system tray, and GPU, CPU, and HDD usages are all at 100%. Then, Windows will try to raise the page file size, and will also try to minimize BF2 to show you a little message that says "Windows has increased your page file size". Windows ends up fighting with your other programs for control of the HDD and CPU so it can reaise the page file size, and therefore your system may freeze up for a little while. It's happened to me before. Just set the min. and max. to 700MB to avoid this.
 
HOCP4ME said:
There's nothing wrong with having your paging file that big. I have mine set at 1.5GB. As long as you don't use more than about 5-10% of the hard drive I don't think that would cause a problem. Moving it to a faster drive is probably what solved the problem, not decreasing the size. Unless of course you have a small hard drive like less than 20GB or something.

Oh, and set the min. and max. page file size at the same setting. Setting them different means that, when your programs need more than the min. size, Windows will make it bigger. There's nothing wrong with that, except that usually the only time you need more than 500MBs of page file is when you're playing a memory-hogging game like BF2, folding in the background, with several other progarms running in the system tray, and GPU, CPU, and HDD usages are all at 100%. Then, Windows will try to raise the page file size, and will also try to minimize BF2 to show you a little message that says "Windows has increased your page file size". Windows ends up fighting with your other programs for control of the HDD and CPU so it can reaise the page file size, and therefore your system may freeze up for a little while. It's happened to me before. Just set the min. and max. to 700MB to avoid this.
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Thanks for the advice, I'll do that.
 
check your memory dump settings as well if you do a complete memory dump it will take a bitch of a time to shut off
 
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