Displays message saying 'computer is shutting down' then goes to blue
screen with cursor and just sits there.
ctrl-alt-del does nothing. How can I tell what is holding up the
shutdown process?
Power management being corrupted most likely. That's not original cause
of it becoming like that of course - only you could know what that would
be, it's the result of a hard shutdown exacerbating the problem. There's
an easy fix however. Open up device manager, then floppy drive
controllers and remove the entry "Standard Floppy Disk Controller". Then
Open System and depending on your hardware you Will either see
and entry labeled "Advanced Power Management Support" or "ACPI System
Button". Remove that as well. In the later case, you will also have an
entry labelled "ACPI Power Button" rempove that as well. When you remove
then ones under System, The computer will ask you if you want to
restart, click *no* if you have the second example and then
until you remove both buttons. Your computer should then shut down
properly - at least until you do another hard shutdown manually, which
you should try to avoid at all costs.
You don't need to be in safe mode for the above - a little bonus.
