Windows 8.1 won't shutdown or reboot? Does nothing.

[rpeters83]

I'm not sure when or how this started happening, but if I try to shutdown or reboot by any means - from settings, right-click from start, or command prompt shutdown -s - it does nothing. I click and it does nothing. When I run shutdown -s, it just hangs and also does nothing. I can log off, THEN shut down, but nothing from the desktop itself.

I don't really know how long this has been going on, as I rarely reboot my PC.

Even after a reboot, it still won't shut down.

Any ideas?

 

[Tsumi]

What about alt + F4? Or from ctrl + alt + delete?

Seems like something got screwed up on your installation. I would run a sfc /scannow on elevated command prompt. Not sure what other methods could be had for error detection.

 

[Demon10000]

I had this problem and it turned out to be video drivers. I couldn't even guess at the version I was running, but I was (and still am) rocking an NVidia GTX460.

 

[Tawnos]

You're likely running into a driver that is improperly using an API that says "don't shut down, I'm doing important stuff!" You can read about that behavior here.

One thing you can try is to use shutdown /s /t 1, which forces shutdown after one second (ignoring any pending requests). If that works, it's likely the driver issue. If not, report back and we can try something else.

 

[Demon10000]

One thing you can try is to use shutdown /s /t 1, which forces shutdown after one second (ignoring any pending requests). If that works, it's likely the driver issue. If not, report back and we can try something else.

That will just initiate a normal shutdown in 1 second. You need to add /f to force it to ignore running applications.

shutdown /s /t 0 /f

No need to wait the 1 second...

 

[Tawnos]

That will just initiate a normal shutdown in 1 second. You need to add /f to force it to ignore running applications.

shutdown /s /t 0 /f

No need to wait the 1 second...

Maybe you should read the docs:

/t xxx Set the time-out period before shutdown to xxx seconds.
The valid range is 0-315360000 (10 years), with a default of 30.
If the timeout period is greater than 0, the /f parameter is
implied.

 

[B00nie]

I say test it with 10 years to see if it works properly