It Takes Two Times To Shutdown XP

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Guest

When I click on "Start", "Turn Off Computer", then "Restart" or "Turn Off",
all I get is a quick screen flash. Nothing happens. The compute goes back to
normal operation with no hangs or errors.
When I perform the shutdown routine a second time, everything works fine. No
hangup, long waits, etc. Shutdown proceeds normally.
Being curious, I checked to see what programs and processes were shutdown,
if any, after the first attempts. I can't identify anything has been
shutdown. It's as if I never tried to shutdown. I have gone for hours after
going through the shutdown process once, and nothing odd happens. Yet, it
always shutsdown perfectly on the second try.
I did find an MS article that describes these symptoms perfectly. However,
the cause and solution doesn't apply to my situation. It appears that a
certain file loaded by Norton AntiVirus 2003 can cause this behavior; but
I've never had Norton AntiVirus on this machine. I am however running AVG
free edition.
Also, I don't know when exactly this problem manifested, because I
frequently go weeks before I need to shutdown or restart. I noticed it about
3 months ago and have off-and-on tried to find a solution without success. I
did perform a repair reinstall of XP (Home Edition), but that had no effect
on the problem.
Any thoughts, advise, guidance, etc. would be greatly appreciated.
TIA,

Lynn Livingston
 
Look to Event Viewer for possible clues. Post back if you're not
familiar with using Event Viewer (or simply do a web search and look for
a tutorial.)

If event viewer is not helpful, you're going to have to go through a
potentially lengthy and tedious process of elimination:

"How to perform advanced clean-boot troubleshooting in Windows XP"
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;316434

Of course, if you have any other clues to share as to what might be
causing the problem, that could be helpful.
 
Unfortunately, Event Viewer acknowledges the event as a failure to shutdown.
Only advise from EV is basically "try again".
Can anyone describe the mechanism behind XP's shutdown routine? When a user
requests a shutdown, is there actually an executable file envoked, or maybe a
system built or maintained bat file?
I'm probably way over-simplifying things, but so far my gut feeling is that
the system must "think" the initial shutdown request was executed. Perhaps
there is a log other than event viewer that details what is taking place at
the initial shutdown request?
Can you tell I know less than nothing about how shutdown works? ; 0
TIA,

Lynn Livingston
 
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