Logoff & Shutdown "Ending Program...."

[GP Leo]

EVERY SINGLE TIME my wife and I log off or shutdown our XP Home SP3, we get
"Ending Program. Please wait..." and, possibly later, "This program is not
responding..." when, to our knowledge, there is NO program running. How can
we eliminate this inconvenience? Regards to those of you who pointed me to
the solution of earlier problems.

 

[R. McCarty]

Which program does the warning message indicate ? There is a
Microsoft Add-on service called User Hive Profile Cleanup that
can help with shutdown/logoff. Otherwise, there are a number of
applications that do not properly terminate ( Norton...) Windows
also closes services ( apps without a user interface or window )
that might also be stalling. Windows provides an Event Log that
may hold clues to what is preventing a normal session to end.
Click Start, Run (Type) EventVwr.Msc [Enter]
The two key logs are Application and System - you're interested
in both Warnings and Errors.

The Profile Hive Cleanup service can be downloaded here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...6d-8912-4e18-b570-42470e2f3582&DisplayLang=en

 

[Unknown]

Without a doubt, some program did not shut down 'correctly'. You need to do
the process of elimination.
Before each shutdown look in task manager to see what is running and delete
one at a time till program is found.
To save time you may want to shutdown any virus or malware programs first as
that is the usual cause.

 

[Thee Chicago Wolf]

EVERY SINGLE TIME my wife and I log off or shutdown our XP Home SP3, we get

"Ending Program. Please wait..." and, possibly later, "This program is not
responding..." when, to our knowledge, there is NO program running. How can
we eliminate this inconvenience? Regards to those of you who pointed me to
the solution of earlier problems.

Try the following:

Go to Start > Run and enter REGEDIT and press OK. This fires up the
registry editor.

Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop. Edit the
following keys:

1) AutoEndTasks: Default is 0, make it 1

You can also try the following settings under the same branch:

2) ForegroundLockTimeout: Default is 20000, make it 0

3) HungAppTimeoutefault is 5000, try 1000, if it's still slow, try
500. I don't suggest going anything lower than 250 though as it could
really make programs / services that need a momentd or two to end
act...funny.

4) WaitToKillAppTimeout: Default is 20000, try 1000, if it's still
slow, try 500. I don't suggest going anything lower than 250 though as
it could really make programs / services that need a moment or two to
end act...funny.

Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control

1) WaitToKillServiceTimeout: Default is 20000, try 2000. I don't use
this setting personally and it's questionable whether XP supports it
or not.

When you finish, reboot. Log into XP and then do a shutdown and see
how long it take.

If some of the keys above don't exists, just create them using the
right mouse button.

#1 is a String Value
#2 is DWORD value
#3 is a String value
#4 is a String value

- Thee Chicago Wolf