First Vista glitch: won't shut down!

[Ike]

Core Duo laptop, 2GB RAM, Vista Home Premium

Flawless in four months - a great laptop. However, with no new
installs or changes, today it began having a problem shutting down.

It goes to the blue Vista screen which says Shutting Down, and
the blue ring just spins and spins. I waited 15 minutes the last
time, just to be sure.

What might it be? What can I check?

Thanks,

Ike

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, Ike.

I don't know what all the delays might be, but sometimes my desktop Vista
Ultimate x64 also takes a long time to shut down. Sometimes more than 20
minutes. :>(

The long delay usually doesn't occur if I close WLM and other programs and
then wait a minute or two before clicking Shut Down. My guess is that Vista
is closing files and "putting away its toys". There may also be
housekeeping chores running in the background, such as Indexing or
Defragmenting.

I've never had a laptop, so I don't know if the steps are different there.
I can either click the Orb and then Shut Down, or just press the Power Off
button on the computer case. In the latter case, though, if WLM is still
running when I push the button, I might see some of my Read messages are
still Unread when I start up again, because WLM didn't get a chance to close
them properly. Since I seldom use that button, I can't be sure of any
pattern. But Vista's shut down process can vary, depending on which
shutdown method we use.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP
(Running Windows Live Mail beta in Vista Ultimate x64)

 

[Ike]

Thanks, RC - -

When someone shuts down a laptop, it's often to get up and go
somewhere carrying it. A lengthy shutdown is clearly not a
design element, so something's wrong and there should be a way
to fix it. I'll try closing everything before hitting the SHUT
DOWN or RESTART, but hope someone generates additional ideas on
what to do about this.

Ike

 

[Gary G. Little]

While it might not be desirable, it very likely has nothing to do with
anything being wrong; it simply happens at times. I've seen it happen on
both Vista and XP laptops at various and sundry times. It may happen because
updates are being installed, though then you will see a shutdown message
telling not to force a power down. On my laptop, It is mostly happenstance,
depending on what has to be done to take the system to a state that it can
effectively power down. "Sleep" is typically much faster than shutdown, but
may still not be as "fast" as you want at times.

If you unfortuantely have Novell installed on your XP laptop, then NEVER get
in a hurry for either shutdown or startup. If your laptop ALWAYS takes more
than 15 minutes to powerdown, then you may need to evaluate your own work
habits and what you open.

 

[Ike]

Have you got any USB things plugged in to it? Are you using a readyboost
flash drive? Unplug and see how that goes.

Thanks I'll try that...

Also, no Novell - nothing unusual on this except Office 2007 and
my work products.

 

[Guest]

you can try to disable start up files by going to system configuration window

 

[Hellspawn]

I have this very same problem and asked around on several forums without any
luck. Whenever I shutdown it goes into a very deep sleep mode and nothing
will wake it up anymore, but the power light is still on and the fans may
still be turning. I'm most certain that it is not a hardware issue, because
in the early days (before installing any programs) it did do the shutdown or
reboot completely, not always, rather randomly, but now it won't do it
anymore at all.

This is what I did already:
1.- Power management is set to "shutdown" on all options - no sleep mode
anywhere, did not do the trick.
2.- i tried to log-off first and then shut down - well, sleep mode it is.
3.- I tried to disable processes via task manager - one by one - to possibly
find the offender - nothing.
4.- I tried clean boot - sleep mode that is all I got
5.- I tried safe mode - sleep mode that is all i got
6.- I defragmented disk twice - oh, well...
7.- I used RegCure until there was absolute no issue anymore - nothing
8.- Completely free of viruses, spam and/or spyware.

I have not yet tempered with my BIOS.
I have MS-Office 2007 installed and hope it is not the one who screws things
up.

My machine is an Alienware m7700,
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+
Dual Core 2.2GHz, 2x 512K Cache WUXGA
PCIx nVidia 7800 GTX 256MB Video Card
RAM 2GB DDR, Dual Channel
Two DVD-RW DL Drives
Two 100GB Hard Drives; 200GB RAID 0 volume

Any help or ideas are highly appreciated

 

[Hellspawn]

Well, I'm going to try that and let you know if that does the trick.
I just read that Vista only works well with the ACPI BIOS installed. How
would I ever know if my BIOS is an ACPI?

This is what I got:

Phoenix 4.06CJ15, 1/9/2006

SMBIOS Version 2.34

Thanks,

 

[croberts]

I have had the same problem for the last month. Tried flashing the BIOS - no
help. Have you made any progress since your first post? I cannot find
anything that helps.

 

[annie]

Did you resolve your shutting down problemL? My computer will remain in shut
down mode indefinitely - all night long if I let it. Please advise!

annie

 

[weewillie]

Did you resolve your shutting down problemL? My computer will remain in shut
down mode indefinitely - all night long if I let it. Please advise!

annie

I resolved my 2 different shutdown problems

Firstly by contacting HP support, who provided a bios and driver
updates

Secondly in this newsgroup, with the help of an MVP, just post the
details of your problem in a new thread here in this newsgroup

 

[NicePeople]

Wow. I have the same problem too. It will stay on the Shut Down screen
spinning all night long. I will contact HP thanks.
I wonder if you also faced this problem (although this should be a seperate
thread) Whenever I download anything, it will stay at 99%. I have to bring up
the task manager and abort it. The downloaded file is however fine. It
probably is an "Anti Virus" kind of issue because these downloads are usually
checked by the "Security/Firewall" category programs.

 

[Peekz]

This did the trick for me - turns out the Xbox360 HD-DVD drive was the
culprit. Cheers!