"Freeze" at bringing up shutdown options.

[arch0nmyc0n]

I have this Dell Lattitude D600 laptop thats sitting in a docking station. I get a call from this guy about how it's not shutting down anymore. I go and check it out later in the day and he's logged on, closes all programs, clicks Start, then shutdown. Then the machine just sits there. Not doing anything, nothing is responding, but mouse is moving. CTRL ALT DEL brings up the options screen and clicking shutdown there freezes the machine completely.
So I try some things like del temp files and things like that. Not enitrely sure how to proceed. I search the internet and almost all pages talk about it hanging AFTER the shut down has begun. the problem is the shutdown hasn't begun on this system. It just hangs there trying to bring up the "What do you want your computer to do" option screen.
So I power it off and on and login as my test network logon, loads fine, shuts down fine. Log back in as him, loads fine, shuts down fine too. Log in as him again, load all his regular programs. Close them all and it shuts down fine. I knew it wasn't fixed, but it was working then so I left. He told me the next day that when he left for the day it happened again. So I went to his office and figuring it may only fail this first time, I decided to log off first. Logged off just fine. When I click on the shutdown button on the login screen, the button depressed and everything hung there. The mouse was still responding. So powered it off and on and went and checked a few things I'd read on the inter, nothing of consequence as everything was set and appeared fine. Checked add and remove and found EZCD creator 5 installed, Remembered that being a pain in the past so I uninstalled it as he never uses it anyways. And left it again. I came in today and he said it was still sorta doing it. Apparently he clicked shut down like he normally does and it "froze" but he had to walk away for a while and when he returned the shutdown option screen was up and he clicked ok and away it went.

I've never seen anything like this before. any ideas what to look at?

As per a suggestion I read I'm going to delete the docked profile and let windows rebuild it today and see if that affects it at all, but from what I was reading it probably won't help...

[BOB IROC]

From what you describe it almost sounds like something might be running in the background that is hung up. When the symptoms happen can you launch task manager? Check to see what is running and maybe manually kill the processes to see if that helps.

[CeeBee]

Try "shutdown -r -f -t 3" and see if it shuts down.

[arch0nmyc0n]

Yer missing the point. The shutdown hasn't even begun. I haven't even selected the type of shutdown yet... and I watched it today it takes approx 3 minutes for the option screen to come up so it's not frozen. I wasn't watching as I was downstairs at the time, but I was told the task manager was also on hold while the shutdown screen waited to come up.

[BOB IROC]

Yer missing the point. The shutdown hasn't even begun. I haven't even selected the type of shutdown yet... and I watched it today it takes approx 3 minutes for the option screen to come up so it's not frozen. I wasn't watching as I was downstairs at the time, but I was told the task manager was also on hold while the shutdown screen waited to come up.

I thought you meant that you selected shutdown and nothing happend and all the icons were still there. Have you tried running a repair install of windows? Maybe some corrupted files or somethin

[arch0nmyc0n]

I have not tried a repair yet no. I'll porbably just reimage the laptop and spend the 2 hors installing all the guys crap again to avoid any issues...

I just wanted to try to figure out what it is as I've never seen anything like it.

The rest of the machine seems to operate fine.

[BOB IROC]

Not really. I have seen plenty of machines that have hung after selecting shut down and some go to a blank desktop just showing the background and some just do nothing. I have usually narrowed it down to two main causes. Stuck Service or process and killing it in Task Manager allows the shut down and the other is something like a bad hard drive.

[NooNoo]

If EasyCD was on there, was DirectCD on there? That is one of the culprits.

The other is trying to unload the profile and it can't, but that usually times out after one minute.

Before re-imaging, just create a new profile and see if that is ok.

[arch0nmyc0n]

Direct CD was on there at some time, but was already removed before I got there. I could probably try another profile so long as the rest of his programs work. We're using roaming profiles primarily, but for laptops it's local. I'd have to clarify but maybe I could delete his profile and have a fresh copy brought down fromthe server... The thing is, I can log off just fine. Start, Logoff and the machine goes about it's business and comes back to the login screen, so I'm having a hard time thinking it's a profile.

SO bob, you've seen odd behaviour like that even before the shutdown begins? I asked him to run killnotes before logging off to see if that makes a difference. We have the occasional rogue Notes problem. We use Iron mountain for backup and I did notice it got up to around 75,000k memory... I understand that it could be a service or something causing it but I've never seen it hold up the shutdown option screen up that long ever.

One other thing I did notice. When it does eventually come up the fading background to grayscale is already done. So it goes from colour to greyscale immediate without doing the fade...

[arch0nmyc0n]

Well we are using Trend Officescan So I;ll look into that one. But again it's NOT a shutdown issue specifically. It's halting at bringing up the shutdown option screen. So the problem exists before the shut down is started.

[NooNoo]

It is precisely because your profile works fine (you can log on and shut down ok) that proves that the user's profile is corrupt. Before deleting, create a new one - the programs will be there if this is a local profile.