Stumped....XP Will not shut down

[Dravin]

My birthday came around a while little while ago, and I desided to treat myself to a system overhaul. I'll list the specs before I get into the problem:

Gigaybte GA-7VRXP
512mb DDR 2100
ATI Radion 9000 Pro 128mb DDR
30 Gig WD HD 7200rpm (where Win XP Pro is installed)
Raid(0) Stripe 20gig (Programs 'n Such)
AMD 1700+ XP w/ Dr. Thermal 5200rpm
......Hey I'm not rich, but its a screamer

Here is the problem. The computer will not shut down. After the first install if XP, I promptly went to MS Updates and got all the updates I wanted. Left out the .Net crap, and a few other fluff ones. At this point I assumed I had the reset switch or power switch reversed on the Board. Said "eh well" and prommised myself I'd get to it later. Kinda dreaded going back in so soon, as I had done the wire and cable origomy inside the box with zip ties for airflow. *Shrug*

But it was driving me nuts that every time I attempted to shut down the computer, it just restarted instead. So I opened it up and dubble checked the pinouts. Nope, everything is correct.

Also, after completeing all said MS Updates, my new machine went from resetting in a few seconds, to taking aprox. 3 minuts to reset, and thats just the powering down aspect.

So after searching and searching, I could not find anything related to this. I even swaped out the board with a friend in town who had the same model. Same thing. Though he does not have the problem when running his system.

So, frustrated, I reinstalled XP Pro. Shut down fine & completely, and damn fast too. Reset just fine as well, didnt seem to get the two confused anymore. Thought it was just one of those freak things and whent about my way....to installing MS Updates.

Back to not stutting down, just resetting again, and doing an incredibly slow job of it as well again. With the system taking 3+ minuts to cycle down for a reset, and having almost 40+ MS Updates installed, I'm loathe to attempt to uninstall all of them, as XP demands a restart after each uninstall. Just to try to find the one causeing this.

If anyone had any ideas, please post.
Thanx guys(& girls).

[NooNoo]

So you have narrowed it one of the windows updates... did you just go for sp1 or did you do all the individual updates? If you have not done SP1, that might be the way to go.

Otherwise I don't see any quicker option other than uninstalling the updates one at a time... but I would start with the non-security updates, there are less of those...

[IT Len]

A couple of MS KB articles that might help:

Your Computer May Not Shut Down After You Upgrade to Windows XP referring to hangs on shutdown.

Next, Windows XP Restarts When You Try to Shut Down Your Computer

Next, Windows XP Restarts Unexpectedly or Restarts When You Shut Down the Computer

That should get you started...let us know what happens.

Good Luck.

[Dravin]

Thanx for the input. I'll look through those and see what happens.

[Dravin]

Thanx for the suggestions IT Len, going through those MS articles did not improve on my issue however.

The only other thing I noticed; when I try to restart the computer, the that the HD Light goes solid for the 3+ minutes it taked for the machine to cycle down. I'd love to know what is happening during that time. I have a feeling that may be the key to understanding why it happenes.

[Clouiseize]

A clean install in Windows XP is a very straightforward process. Just as there are certain things that need to be done to insure a successful upgrade, the same care is needed with a clean install. First, check the requirements for Windows XP. A box that just squeaks by on the minimum requirements is not going to make you happy with XP. Truthfully, it’s a recipe for disaster. XP has many nice features, but they do require a box which has the oomph to power them adequately. Check the requirements for the appropriate version using the links below.If the computer is up to snuff, the next step is to check the rest of the hardware against the Windows XP Hardware Compatibility List to see if it’s supported.

http://www.microsoft.com/hwdq/hcl/

check here. i think maybe your problem is either a compatabiliy problem or a hard disk partition problem.

[IT Len]

Ok, here's another round of suggestions.

First, did you enable "clear pagefile.sys at shutdown?" If so, it can delay shutdowns to a grossly inordinate amount of time.

Second, one of the big shutdown "time wasters" is the default action of saving settings on exit. Click here for a quick tutorial on how to disable that feature. *read the warnings* It can, however be undone.

Lastly, download MS's BootVis.exe Tool to diagnose boot problems. [I found it to be an extremely useful tool!]

Your stated system specs greatly exceed XP's requirements, so I don't think that's an issue, but some hardware issues are still be explored and reported to and from MS.

Again, good luck.

[Dravin]

Well, I ran M$'s Bootvis tool. The one that is claimed to optimise the boot process. The good news is the computer finally shuts down now.

Only thing yet to uncover is why its taking 3+ minuts to cycle down for a restart or shut down. I do have it set to clear the page file on shut down, so I will take a look at that. The drives are not fragmented at all, so I do not suspect that. All drivers are up to date, and Norton 2003 isnt comming up with anything problematic.

What it boils down to, and I suspect I am not the only tweaker guilty of this offence, is it is probly one of my many tweaks ive done without keeping track, or extensive testing of each one before implimenting the next. When I discover the root of the long shut down, I'll post back. And thanx again for all the imput.

[meatwad]

Did you check to make sure that Advanced Power Management was enabled?

Display Properties/ Screen Saver/ Power/ APM/ Check the enable box.

[Duke of Rezin]

Try opening the registry then go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/CurrentControlSet/Control, click on "Control". Select "WaitToKillServiceTimeout",right click on that and select modify (I think D-word but I can't remember) and set the value at some number<2000 and see if that helps. Meatwad could be right about the APM option though.

[confus-ed]

Originally posted by Dravin
...Only thing yet to uncover is why its taking 3+ minuts to cycle down for a restart or shut down. I do have it set to clear the page file on shut down, so I will take a look at that. ...

This'll slow shutdown a fair old time, windoze needs to shuffle through everything in its swap file, checking that it doesn't need any of this stuff again, then it needs to purge the swap file, then disable virtual memory and check all the write-behind caching has been done & then finally set itself so it knows that it deleted the swapfile & to mark a new one for creation....

[Chrej]

Exactly where do you set XP to clear the pagefile on shutdown??

Edit: -Nevermind, I found it!

[Dravin]

I scrounged around the Registry over the last few days, mostly tracking down previous modifications I've made. Do a lot of testing to see what may be causing the slow shut down.

Duke of Rezin's thought about the Service Timeout was a good one. Had not done that. Though even with lowering the value sugnifigently, the shutdown times are stull 3+ minuts.

Duke of Rezin Posted:
"Did you check to make sure that Advanced Power Management was enabled?

Display Properties/ Screen Saver/ Power/ APM/ Check the enable box."

Its enabled. Thanx for the idea though.

Still stumped

[nathallen]

How about a little bit more clarification. Where does the system pause/wait while trying to reset the system? Is it on the saving your settings dialog box, on the normal windows desktop, etc. Also, what all is running on the system at startup? Having a bunch of programs running on the system tray area eats up memory and sometimes the programs can have a hard time shutting down. You could remove the unnecessary programs from the startup folder or get into the preferences of the program and disable the run on startup setting. Another very useful tool is the event viewer. Check this out, it is possible that there is a program crashing or driver conflict or something similar, and the event viewer could help to diagnose this. The event viewer is in the administrative tools folder. Getting to this is easiest through the control panel->administrative tools->event viewer. Then click on the application, secrity, system logs on the left pane. The right pane shows the events. If you have any that are a red x, those are very important to look at. Then you could go to support.microsoft.com and try a search for the corresponding error message from the event. Another thing to try would be going to the hardware manufacturer's web site and getting all the latest drivers. I have seen some systems having lots of problems that a video driver update fixes or sound driver. That is just a possibility also. Best of luck.

[nathallen]

Sorry, just thought of another thing that you could check out. Take a look at the device listings in device manager. Control panel->system icon->hardware tab->device manager button. See if there are any hardware conflicts listed here. Also see if there are any unknown devices. Some of the new motherboards require you to load specific drivers for the hardware on the board. Drivers such as the IDE chipset, AGP bus driver, etc. These drivers, if needed, should be on the cd-rom that came with the motherboard. This could also fix some problems. Just a thought.