Windows XP Stall at Shutdown

Recently my window xp sp2 home takes forever to shutdown.
It sits at the "windows is shutting down" screen for minutes even though the orange loading light on the processor doesnt flicker like it usually does. Its like windows feels like taking a rest temporarily before shutting down completely.

I have been running jkdefrag frequently recently which could be the cause but i do not see how. jkdefrag has been flickering black dots on the main screen which i dont believe ive seen before, could it be disk errors?

I have also recently installed macrium reflect, xilisoft video converter from GAOTD and many games with safari browser.

Obvious ones are the video converter and macrium reflect since those type of programs dig into the OS with dlls and drivers.

But i want to keep these giveaways so i hope there is a way of finding a specific culprit.

Thanks.

 

That's why i hate GAOTDs. Most of them, you can't reinstall after a format.

Anyway, Macrium has a service that you can set to manual in admin tools-> Services and it won't startup automatically.

If the culprit is another, maybe you could use ERUNT to backup the registry, uninstall the suspicious applications and reinstall. BUT, i am not 100% sure that all the GAOTDs will work. If they add a registry entry for registration, i guess they will. If not... you 're done.

I 've had a random BSOD myself lately and unless you start uninstalling one by one, i don't think there is another way to find what's wrong. In my case, it was the updated Realtek audio drivers... Seems my mobo only likes the drivers that came with the CD (v. 1.43), instead of the supposedly better and newer 1.7x or 1.95... I would have never guessed it without trying uninstalling every driver and security application.


EDIT: How stupid of me! Use Macrium Reflect to make an image of your hard disk! Then uninstall your suspicious proggies one by one and see what happens. Once you 've found the culprit, restore the image.

P.S.: Run a Checkdisk.

 

btw, have you tried running CHKDSK?

 

I had a similar problem, powerdown part like yours. I traced it down to a bunch of window updates I did from the update website, then about a month a go I did a group of updates and it went away. Durring my search for some sort of troubleshoot guide I ran across this http://aumha.org/win5/a/shtdwnxp.htm also look at the Windows Event Viewer for errors and clues.

 

You might wish to try User Profile Hive Cleanup Service.

 

You could also have a look at line 76, right column (Auto End Tasks to Enable a Proper Shutdown - Undo) over at Kelly's Tweaks and Tips

 

How to run CHKDSK?

 

Remove anything connected to your usb ports, that has flashcard readers (readers/printers with readers/usb extensions/usb thumbdrives). see if that makes a difference.

When I had a problem with the computer not shutting down, removing the usb 4 in 1 adapter that I always had connected, fix my problem.

You can run checkdisk from the command prompt . Type chckdsk c:/f . You can also do a scandisk make sure you check the box to fix errors.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q315265

 

Start/Program files/command prompt. Type chkdsk at the flashing prompt in the black box. when it finishes it will tell you if you have to run chkdsk/F .

 

I just did system restore which fixed the problem but now my computer is extremely unstable. Firefox no longer opens, my add remove list wont populate and avast had a extreme real-time scanning period where it froze everything.

Hopefully it clears itself up after a couple of boots.

EDIT: System restore did not fix the problem, but removing avast did. Thats too bad because i really liked avast but i guess ill have to wait for the next version of avg free.

 

I think these situations are often solved within 10-20 minutes restoring your system from an image backup. Sometimes trying to find out the reasons can be really time consuming.

 

Sorry, this would of course not be possible with an image restoration.