Won't reboot, just continues to work in XP

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macker123

n00b
Joined
Jul 12, 2004
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46
I have a windows XP box. It won't reboot, shutdown etc from the OS. I need to do a hard reset with the power supply. That is the only way to get it to turn off. If I try to reboot/shutdown from OS it shuts down a few services, but then continues to hummmm.... along forever working sort of.

Any idea why this is?
 
nessus said:
Something is hosed.
Click to expand...

Wow...insightful, but yet useless.

It sounds like an app is not letting go and the OS is sitting around waiting for it. The OS itself is trying to shut down (since the services are shutting down). I would take a look at what's running in the task manager when you try to shut down. It may come down to the point where you have to force kill one process at a time, while trying to reboot after each one. Once the system does, the last task you killed is the offender.
 
djnes said:
It sounds like an app is not letting go and the OS is sitting around waiting for it. The OS itself is trying to shut down (since the services are shutting down). I would take a look at what's running in the task manager when you try to shut down. It may come down to the point where you have to force kill one process at a time, while trying to reboot after each one. Once the system does, the last task you killed is the offender.
Click to expand...


Yeah like the older logitech keyboard drivers, they just like to hang there when you try to power down, before i found out that was a problem it took me like 10 mins to shut down the comp
 
Before doing a Repair, I would 1st boot from installation CD to Recovery Console, wait and navigate to Command Prompt:From there run chkdsk /R.
 
djnes said:
Wow...insightful, but yet useless.
Click to expand...

Saying my machine won't shut down without providing any more detail that what OS is running is like saying my car won't start and its a Ford to a mechanic. My answer was as detailed as the description allowed.

Also, there was no request in the original post for what the next steps to resolve the issue might be. If there had been, my post would have been more along the lines of...

What I'd do is look in the system and applkication event viewers and see if there are any reports of services failing to respond to the service shutdown command. If none are listed, I'd check the services control panel to see if any services are in the "stopping" state. If so, they are very likely related to your problem. Check the software related to those services.

If none are, reboot in safe mode. Does the machine shutdown cleanly?

Yes. Start removing items from the "Startup" group and the various "run" registry keys (making backups before the registry changes of course). Run a spyware checker. Are you still having shutdown issues? In safe mode, note which drivers are not being loaded. Disable those drivers in normal mode. If the machine still does not shutdown cleanly proceed to the steps for "No". If the machine shuts down cleanly, then use a binary search pattern to find the offending driver. (Turn on half the drivers, if it still works, turn on half of the remainder, if it doesn't work, turn off half of the drivers you just turned on, assuming your working with ten drivers, you'll find the correct one in four boot sequences or less)

No. There is something seriously wrong with your base OS. Run the system file checker. If no problems are found, run a chkdsk /f /r to verify there are no disk surface problems. If none are found, you will probably be better off reinstalling your operating system rather than troubleshooting further. If the reinstall doesn't resolve the issue, you have a really funky motherboard issue with ACPI.
 
i'll just add somehting...

try killing the winlogon.exe process in task manager and see if that will at least dump you to the logon screen.
 
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