Slow XP Shutdown

Hey all! I'd first just like to say that I've been lurking in this forum for at least a year or two and I've learned quite a bit from all of you friendly active posters. My problem is that as of about a week ago, my main Windows XP machine takes forever to shut down or log off.

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20 Posts
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Hey all!
I'd first just like to say that I've been lurking in this forum for at least a year or two and I've learned quite a bit from all of you friendly active posters.
 
My problem is that as of about a week ago, my main Windows XP machine takes forever to shut down or log off. It used to take about 10 - 30 seconds (guessing) but now it takes about 3 to 4 minutes EVERY time. Once I click the option to shut down or log off, it seems to do nothing and sits there for the 3 or 4 minutes before it actually follows through. I'm always doing different things so I can't think of anything in particular I did to cause this to happen.
 
Anyone have any suggestions as to how I can find out what is causing this? Is there perhaps a tool similar to Bootvis that can be used to diagnose a shutdown? Any help would be appreciated.
 
Thanks,
Mark

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Responses to this topic


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20 Posts
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Joined 2002-05-23
OP
...and yes, I realize that I accidentally put "Slow XP Slutdown" as the original Topic. lol

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1457 Posts
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Joined 2001-12-18
When the system goes to shutdown, it does a lot of things. It releases drivers,.dlls, writes back settings, etc. If you have installed and uninstalled a lot of programs or hardware, there is a residue of things that are often left behind especially in the registry. There may be services that were once required by a program that you may no longer use, but the service is still called up. And then, there are all of those temp files and IE trash the hard disk has to account for. In other words, all of these things can add up to longer shut downs.

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1915 Posts
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Clearing the Pagefile can take forever too. Try resizing it

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530 Posts
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Joined 2001-10-09
Apply following tweaks. Hope it helps.
 
 
Tweak #8 - Automatically Kill Programs At Shutdown
 
don't you hate it when, while trying to shut down, you get message boxes telling you that a
program is still running? Making it so that Windows automatically kills applications running is a
snap. Simply navigate to the HKEY_CURRENT_USERControl PanelDesktop directory in the Registry,
then alter the key AutoEndTasks to the value 1.
 
Note: the key 'AutoEndTasks' might not exist. If not, simply create it with a value of 1. To disable
the AutoEndTask feature, simply change the value back to 0.
 
Tweak #3 - Shutdown on speed
 
By altering a few registry settings, you can dramatically decrease the amount of time it takes for
Windows to shut down. To do this, first open up the registry editor and navigate to
 
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\
 
Once there, find the value HungAppTimeout and make sure it is set to 5000 (that's the default).
Now, in the same folder, look for the value WaitToKillAppTimeout. Set this to 4000 (the default is
20000).
 
Lastly, navigate to the folder
 
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\
 
and change the value WaitToKillServiceTimeout to 4000 as well. Another thing that helps
speeding up shutting down is going to Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Services and then
setting the NVidia Driver Help service to Manual.

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20 Posts
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I seemed to have found the cause. Last week I swapped keyboards and it turns out it was the Logitech iTouch software that was killing my shutdowns. Uninstalling it made the issue completely go away.
 
Thanks for the help,
Mark

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1 Posts
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Been dealing with that problem for a few months myself, tried everything i could find about it on the net with no luck until today....
Was having some problem with a backup progam so i went into services thru the admin tools, enable a few of them to automatic instead of manual or disabled and to my surprise Xp shutdown and restarted in 3 seconds instead of 3 minutes. Wish i knew exactly which one that was causing it, will have to go back later and try them one at a time....