XP Hangs for 5 min before restarting... Please Help!

[Adam]

When I hit START, TURN OFF COMPUTER & RESTART, my Win Xp
Professional seems to hang for about 5 min before it
finally resets. During this time there is no drive
activity and absolutely nothing is happening. As stated,
after about 5 min or more, the computer then reboots as
usual. I have hit the reset button after the drive
activity stops and XP comes back up without a problem but
I am worried there may be something seriously wrong. It
is a fresh reinstall after a total FDisk of the hard
drive. I am running Zone Alarm also - but even when ZA is
disabled, WinXP Professional still hangs for about 5 min
at the "Windows is shutting down" screen... Leading me to
believe it is something else. Possibly a Trojan or
worse... Could someone please give me some options to
try? Suggestions that are somewhat safe before I try to
reinstall the XP op again.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

[R. McCarty]

Anytime, you abruptly shut off a PC, it can leave the disk
drive in a "Dirty" state. You need to do a Chkdsk C: /R to
clear any errors or inconsistencies that exist on the drive
before trying to resolve the shutdown issue.

Most likely, the shutdown is from a process that it is not
closing correctly or some other 3rd party app that is not
closing. There are some Registry tweaks that can help,
such as AutoEndTasks and adjusting the Timeout values.
Visit the following for some comprehensive suggestions:
http://aumha.org/win5/a/shtdwnxp.htm