Shutdown takes longer after SP2 update

[John Blaustein]

P4P800-E Deluxe, Windows XP Home.

From the time I click "Start>Turn Off Computer>Turn Off" until the power
goes off is about 30-35 seconds. That seems longer than it was before
installing SP2. Has anyone else noticed that?

The first part of shutdown goes very fast -- Logging off and Saving
Settings -- but then the system almost seems to hang on Windows Shutting
Down...

Does 35 seconds seem like it's longer than it should be?

Thank you.

John

 

[Ender]

P4P800-E Deluxe, Windows XP Home.

From the time I click "Start>Turn Off Computer>Turn Off" until the power
goes off is about 30-35 seconds. That seems longer than it was before
installing SP2. Has anyone else noticed that?

The first part of shutdown goes very fast -- Logging off and Saving
Settings -- but then the system almost seems to hang on Windows Shutting
Down...

Does 35 seconds seem like it's longer than it should be?

Thank you.

John

Yes, your observed shutdown time does seem longer than it should be.
After my SP2 upgrade I noticed that it takes a few seconds longer to
start up (used to be 2 sweeps of the animated bar on the logo screen,
now it is 4 sweeps) but the shutdown was not affected at all. My
P4C800-E Deluxe shuts down in under 15 seconds (generally around 10
seconds) without any issues. I would check to see what services are
running, and what background applications are active, and try
disabling or shutting down one at a time to see if you can isolate the
one that is causing the delay. Is there any disk activity during the
pause?

Regards,

Ender

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." Edmund Burke

 

[Max O.]

if you install many programms on your pc the system slows down.
the same with sp2 (250 mb of code). this are many "addons" for windos
and windos has to terminate more programms befor shotdown. this takes
longer time.

Max O.

==============
Posted through www.HowToFixComputers.com/bb - free access to hardware troubleshooting newsgroups.

 

[John Blaustein]

Ender,

Thanks for your reply. (And Max O.)

During the long pause, I hear my second HD stopping. Otherwise, no
excessive disk activity.

I have a couple of services that are always running. One is SpamInspector
(e-mail spam scanner that is set up as a proxy mail client, or something
like that). I will try stopping that and a couple of other apps before
shutting down and see if that isolates the problem.

John

 

[John Blaustein]

I tried disabling everything I could in Task Mgr, but shutdown still takes
about 30 seconds. At first, I thought it might be AVG Free Edition
AntiVirus, but that wasn't it.

I can live with 30 seconds...

John

 

[Ken Oaf]

P4P800-E Deluxe, Windows XP Home.

From the time I click "Start>Turn Off Computer>Turn Off" until the power
goes off is about 30-35 seconds. That seems longer than it was before
installing SP2. Has anyone else noticed that?

The first part of shutdown goes very fast -- Logging off and Saving
Settings -- but then the system almost seems to hang on Windows Shutting
Down...

Does 35 seconds seem like it's longer than it should be?

I have found both startup and shutdown to be slower under SP2.

 

[Ender]

Ender,
Well, after thinking about things a little bit, I began to wonder why
my startup was taking a few seconds longer, so I went into the bios
and found that 32bit transfers had been disabled on my boot drive!

This is very curious, since it was enabled before I installed XP SP2!
At any rate, I re-enabled it, and my boot time is now back to 2 sweeps
of the loading bar again. That is very strange indeed...

In looking for any threads regarding XP shutdown delays I found one
thread in the ABXZone forum that was interesting. There may be
something there that might help. One post indicates that the issue in
one situation was a service that was slow to terminate. There is a
way to change the default time XP will wait for a service (20 seconds)
by changing a value in the registry: This could be a promising remedy
to work with. I would suggest doing a system restore point before
doing any registry editing of this type:

http://www.theeldergeek.com/increase_shutdown_time_for_services_to_close.htm

Two other interesting links to look at:
http://www.abxzone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=64498&highlight=shutdown+delay
http://aumha.org/win5/a/shtdwnxp.php

Good luck!

Ender

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." Edmund Burke

 

[John Blaustein]

Ender,

I will look at the links you provided. Thanks.

I compared the shutdown times on my three machines:

ASUS P4P800-E Deluxe: 30-35 seconds
ASUS CUV4X-E -- PIII/1Ghz: 17 seconds
Dell laptop -- PIII: 15 seconds

All have XP Home, SP2.

I've tried shutting down the P4P800-E Deluxe system with everything disabled
in Task Mgr that I can disable, but still it's about 30 seconds. I have a
wireless Logitech mouse, and I thought that might be an issue, but I
disabled the mouse software and that didn't change a thing.

I just looked at the BIOS for the P4P800-E Deluxe system and 32bit data
transfer was DISABLED for both my WD SATA (C:, boot) and WD IDE (D drives!
I enabled 32bit data transfer, but that didn't help the shutdown time --
maybe it's a couple of seconds shorter. Do you think SP2 disabled the 32bit
setting? I don't know how it was set before I installed SP2. Since you
mentioned 32 bit data transfer, I assume that it SHOULD be set to enabled.

John

 

[Noozer]

I just looked at the BIOS for the P4P800-E Deluxe system and 32bit data

transfer was DISABLED for both my WD SATA (C:, boot) and WD IDE (D drives!
I enabled 32bit data transfer, but that didn't help the shutdown time --
maybe it's a couple of seconds shorter. Do you think SP2 disabled the 32bit
setting? I don't know how it was set before I installed SP2. Since you
mentioned 32 bit data transfer, I assume that it SHOULD be set to enabled.

It wasn't SP2... The BIOS disables this by default. I always enable it, but
I don't think that Windows or the IDE drivers take any notice of this
setting.

 

[Tim]

Hi,

Did you try disabling Windows Update?
Someone said it "calls home" when shutting down to see if there are any
reboot required patches to install.... I disabled it on mine (and run WU
occasionaly manually) and things are back to nermal.

- Tim

 

[John Blaustein]

Noozer...

The system seems to be running just fine with 32 bit enabled, so I'll leave
it that way.


Tim...

Get this... I disabled WU and now the system takes 45 seconds to shutdown.
Go figure!


Ender,

I tried the reg tweak:
[Start] [Run] [Regedit]
Registry Key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control
Modify/Create the Value Name [WaitToKillServiceTimeout] according to the
Value Data listed below.
Data Type: REG_SZ [String Value] // Value Name: WaitToKillServiceTimeout
Value Data: [Default = 20,000 (expressed in milliseconds) Modify to
preference.]
Exit Registry and Reboot

I set it to 10000. It made no difference.

Other than taking a bit too long to shutdown, everything is fine. I guess I
live with this.

John

 

[Ender]

It wasn't SP2... The BIOS disables this by default. I always enable it, but

I don't think that Windows or the IDE drivers take any notice of this
setting.

It is a mystery to me. When I first set my system up, I took shots of
the bios screens with my digital camera (I always do that as a
reference point for each system). I definitely enabled 32 bit
transfer for my SATA boot drive (WD 74g Raptor), and my D: and E:
drives (WD800JB 8 meg cache). I have no idea how or why or it
defaulted back to "Disabled" for the boot drive. As far as I know,
windows cannot make changes to the bios by itself! The D: and E:
drives were still enabled. Enabling 32-bit transfers definitely makes
a difference in boot time, but I suspect you are right when eveything
is handed over to the OS. I know for a fact that my boot time changed
immediately after installing SP2, as I noticed the change from 2 to 4
sweeps of the the logo bar during the OS load. I assumed it was a by
product of additional services running. In any event, now that it is
enabled again, I am back to 2 sweeps of the logo bar again, so... I am
happy again.

Incidentally, the information about automatic updates calling home is
an excellent point to look at. I disabled automatic updates, task
scheduler, and the entire security center on my P4C800-E Dlx after my
upgrade to SP2 as I have my own inbound/outboud firewall, and AV, and
I do manual updates every couple of days. I have no change in
shutdown time.

Regards,

Ender


"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." Edmund Burke

 

[John Blaustein]

Ender,

I also tried the reg tweak set at 2000. No change.

I also tried wizmo.exe shutdown! -- no change.

Clearly, something on my system is taking its time shutting down, and
nothing will speed it up.

John

Noozer...

The system seems to be running just fine with 32 bit enabled, so I'll
leave it that way.


Tim...

Get this... I disabled WU and now the system takes 45 seconds to shutdown.
Go figure!


Ender,

I tried the reg tweak:
[Start] [Run] [Regedit]
Registry Key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control
Modify/Create the Value Name [WaitToKillServiceTimeout] according to the
Value Data listed below.
Data Type: REG_SZ [String Value] // Value Name: WaitToKillServiceTimeout
Value Data: [Default = 20,000 (expressed in milliseconds) Modify to
preference.]
Exit Registry and Reboot

I set it to 10000. It made no difference.

Other than taking a bit too long to shutdown, everything is fine. I guess
I live with this.

John

Hi,

Did you try disabling Windows Update?
Someone said it "calls home" when shutting down to see if there are any
reboot required patches to install.... I disabled it on mine (and run WU
occasionaly manually) and things are back to nermal.

- Tim

 

[John Blaustein]

Well guys... PROBLEM SOLVED!

I was reading through the troubleshooting link that Ender suggested --
http://aumha.org/win5/a/shtdwnxp.php -- and it occurred to me that an
external firewire compact flash card reader I have attached might be the
culprit. I used the tasktray "gizmo" to remove it and clicked shutdown.
Guess what? 13 seconds. I restarted and shutdown again. 13 seconds. For
some reason, with the card reader installed, Windows needs an extra 20
seconds or so to shutdown. I wonder why.

So... I'm leaving the firewire card reader unattached unless I need it.

Thanks to everyone for helping!

John

 

[Ender]

Well guys... PROBLEM SOLVED!

I was reading through the troubleshooting link that Ender suggested --
http://aumha.org/win5/a/shtdwnxp.php -- and it occurred to me that an
external firewire compact flash card reader I have attached might be the
culprit. I used the tasktray "gizmo" to remove it and clicked shutdown.
Guess what? 13 seconds. I restarted and shutdown again. 13 seconds. For
some reason, with the card reader installed, Windows needs an extra 20
seconds or so to shutdown. I wonder why.

So... I'm leaving the firewire card reader unattached unless I need it.

Thanks to everyone for helping!

John

That is great news! Congrats on solving it and also thanks for
sharing the solution so others are aware. It is one of those little
things would otherwise drive you crazy :O)

Regards,

Ender

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." Edmund Burke

 

[John Blaustein]

Ender,

After all the help you guys offer, the least I could do was post the
solution. I could not survive computing with the newsgroups that support my
hardware and software. I'm an end-user, not in the computer business, so
the NG help is invaluable.

Thanks to all...

John

 

[Ed]

Well guys... PROBLEM SOLVED!

I was reading through the troubleshooting link that Ender suggested --
http://aumha.org/win5/a/shtdwnxp.php -- and it occurred to me that an
external firewire compact flash card reader I have attached might be the
culprit. I used the tasktray "gizmo" to remove it and clicked shutdown.
Guess what? 13 seconds. I restarted and shutdown again. 13 seconds. For
some reason, with the card reader installed, Windows needs an extra 20
seconds or so to shutdown. I wonder why.

So... I'm leaving the firewire card reader unattached unless I need it.

Thanks to everyone for helping!

John

13 seconds still seems like a long time, mine shut down in 5 to 6
seconds. (AMD XP & 64)
Ed

 

[Leythos]

13 seconds still seems like a long time, mine shut down in 5 to 6
seconds. (AMD XP & 64)

It will vary based on what your machine is doing - I run SQL Server and
23 virtual web sites, and firewall logging software on my system. It's
going to take longer to close more apps.

 

[Silvertip]

Too True, too true. I became aware of the newsgroups when I wanted to
upgrade from my old P166 and found this NG and the .chips NG, and learned
about the BH6/C300A combo. Have been a faithful lurker since. I have to
admit tho that one of the best that I have ever had the pleasure to
participate in was the old "Flight Sim Forum" on Compuserve. Man were
things different. Modem was a top-of-the-line Hayes 2400 which came with a
free Prodigy account. Heck, back then AOL wasn't anything more than a file
data base. It took 66 minutes to download a 1mb file.
Silvertip

 

[John Blaustein]

Silvertip,

If you remember CompuServe, then you probably also remember CP/M, Osborne,
Kapro and Morrow computers and the first IBM PC that cost $$$. My first PC,
a Morrow had two floppies and when they came out with their first HD, it had
5MB -- that's right MB, not GB. I was thrilled to have that much storage
space. WordStar fit on one floppy with room to spare. And the famous C:>
prompt. The good old days... though I'm happy with XP, IE, Office, Quicken
and Photoshop (with which I make a living), to say nothing of high speed
Internet access.

John