system hangs during shut down

[Ted Jensen]

I'm troubleshooting a friends system running XP. It's Dell hardware,
don't recall model at moment. Anyway, when initiating shutdown
via Start/Turn_off_Computer something strange happens. Sometimes
shortly after getting that far the screen goes black and white before
I can click on TurnOff. When this happens the computer clock stops
and I can't click on anything. Sometimes I make it through TurnOff
and then the clock stops. In either case, the machine just 'sits
there' for up to 3 or 4 minutes, and then the clock starts again
(jumping 3 or 4 minutes ahead to make up for lost time).

Then once it reaches the "Windows is shutting down" stage it can
sit there for another 3 or 4 minutes before shutting down. To the
best of my knowledge, this all started after installation of the SP2
CD, but it may have happened occasionally before that.

Does anyone have a clue as to what might be happening and
how to correct it? The machine is about 3 years old, running about
750 Mhz if I recall.

Ted Jensen

 

[Rick \Nutcase\ Rogers]

Hi Ted,

The black & white sequence is normal, this is by design when you initiate
the shutdown/restart/standby sequence. What is not normal is the delay you
then experience. It means a program or process is not terminating properly.
The only way to troubleshoot this is by selectively shutting down these
things via Task Manager before initiating the shutdown sequence to try and
isolate the cause (suspect AV products as the primary cause, these are the
first things I would disable).

See also if the troubleshooters from MVP Jim Eshelman help:
http://aumha.org/win5/a/shtdwnxp.htm

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Associate Expert - WindowsXP Expert Zone

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org