After SP2 system hangs at shutdown.

[Mark]

My system will no longer shutdown by itself. Whenever I
click 'turn off computer' it starts the process, gets to
the screen where it says 'windows is shutting down' - and
hangs there. I've let it go for 15 minutes to see if it
would shut down by itself and it won't. Does anyone know
what's causing this and how to fix it?

 

[Malke]

My system will no longer shutdown by itself. Whenever I
click 'turn off computer' it starts the process, gets to
the screen where it says 'windows is shutting down' - and
hangs there. I've let it go for 15 minutes to see if it
would shut down by itself and it won't. Does anyone know
what's causing this and how to fix it?

Usually when Windows hangs at shutdown, there is some program running in
the background that is refusing to exit gracefully. Here is a link to
an excellent shutdown troubleshooter:

http://www.aumha.org/win5/a/shtdwnxp.htm

Malke