Windows XP wont shut down.

[david13]

I use start, turn off computer, and then turn off, and it says logging off, then shutting down, but it never does.
A bad relay? Or what?
dc

[Amonester]

1. Happened to me a couple of times on hasta la vista.

Sometimes, it depends on the level of crapiness of the hardware...

Other times, it depends on the level of crapiness of the software (which is not ALL made by m$).

Anyway, to turn off manually, press on the On/Off button and hold on like this for a few seconds (until the system shuts down).

(If it doesn't shut down after a period between 5 to 12 seconds, me dunno what else you could do, apart from pulling the plug out of the power source itself) :hi:

[Dead_Parrot]

2. Hmmm

Could be all sorts. Try running a chkdsk in case it's hanging on a corrupt file: Also, see if you can get it to shutdown OK in safe mode, which might suggest a driver problem.

Can you do a shutdown & restart OK?

[hobbit709]

3. What's weirder is one that turns itself on.

Turned out to be bad BIOS on motherboard.

As far as the hanging on shutdown goes, where does it hang? Has the desktop screen blanked out or does everything still appear on the screen? Does it do the same on shutdown and on restart or just on shutdown?

[CK_John]

4. I normal see this when a lot of changes are made, software added or deleted. It is updating the

registry and has taken up to 20 minutes to complete.

I would suggest you run CCleaner registry option with the unused file extension unchecked. If you are downloading this utility for the first time I recommend you uncheck all the options at the beginning except the desktop icon, this is how they pay(able to provide for free software).

A second utility I use is a registry defrag. This will run 3 or 4 minutes and I run very infrequent.
Link: <http://www.registry-clean.net/free-registry-defrag.htm>

[Why Syzygy]

6. For that registry utility...

Does it install, or run from the downloaded .exe?

[Duer 157099]

5. What happens if you disconnect your internet during shutdown?

There are many possible reasons for a system hang during shutdown, but have you tried to manually disconnect the internet connection to see if that does anything?

Other options involve registry edits that change things like how long the system will wait for certain processes to finish etc. Google "winxp slow shutdown" and you'll find some possible tips etc.