PC fails to log off or shut down on occassions - locks up instead

[Martin C]

I used to get the occassional lockup with my graphics card and had a driver
issue with USB - both of which I *think* I sorted in the following ways:

Graphics card : By upgrading the BIOS on the card to the latest (a
recommendation on the web) and installing the latest Catalyst 8.12 drivers
for my ATI Radeon 4870. This seems to have stopped the lock ups while
playing games.

USB : By reinstalling the motherboard drivers, I do not get the 'IRQ Less
Than Or Equal' BSOD errors any more (fingers crossed!!)

However, I still get the occassional lockup of the PC whenever I log out or
ask the PC to shut down. When it hangs, everything is dead and the only way
to get out of it is a hard power down. The lockup tends to happen more often
after any game has been played, but this is not always the case.

The lockup can occur at any time in the log off or shutdown sequence -
anywhere between almost straight away, to practically finishing but refusing
to turn off the PSU.

I have Win XP Home SP3 fully patched, virus scanned and malware scanned with
nothing found.

Can any kind soul suggest any further things I should be looking at to try
and find the culprit. I cannot find anything in the event viewer that
indicates a problem.

TIA

Martin

 

[BillW50]

In Martin C typed on Tue, 13 Jan 2009 08:51:12 -0000:

I used to get the occassional lockup with my graphics card and had a
driver issue with USB - both of which I *think* I sorted in the
following ways:
Graphics card : By upgrading the BIOS on the card to the latest (a
recommendation on the web) and installing the latest Catalyst 8.12
drivers for my ATI Radeon 4870. This seems to have stopped the lock
ups while playing games.

USB : By reinstalling the motherboard drivers, I do not get the 'IRQ
Less Than Or Equal' BSOD errors any more (fingers crossed!!)

However, I still get the occassional lockup of the PC whenever I log
out or ask the PC to shut down. When it hangs, everything is dead and
the only way to get out of it is a hard power down. The lockup tends
to happen more often after any game has been played, but this is not
always the case.
The lockup can occur at any time in the log off or shutdown sequence -
anywhere between almost straight away, to practically finishing but
refusing to turn off the PSU.

I have Win XP Home SP3 fully patched, virus scanned and malware
scanned with nothing found.

Can any kind soul suggest any further things I should be looking at
to try and find the culprit. I cannot find anything in the event
viewer that indicates a problem.

TIA

Martin

I would run MSCONFIG and stop all all Startup Items. If that doesn't
work then try stopping all System Services (except the Microsoft ones).
One of them should fix your problem. Then you now know where to look.

--
Bill
2 Gateway MX6124 - Windows XP SP2
3 Asus EEE PC 701G4 ~ 2GB RAM ~ 16GB-SDHC
2 Asus EEE PC 702G8 ~ 1GB RAM ~ 16GB-SDHC
Windows XP SP2 ~ Xandros Linux - Puppy - Ubuntu

 

[MartinC]

Not sure if this could be an issue, but when I looked in event viewer today,
I noticed a few warnings with userenv stating:

"Windows saved user <username> registry while an application or service was
still using the registry during log off. The memory used by the user's
registry has not been freed. The registry will be unloaded when it is no
longer in use.
This is often cased by services running as a user account, try configuring
the services to run in either the LocalService or NetworkService account."

I have not tried removing Startup Items yet as nothing new has been added
since the time the PC shut down correctly. I cannot say if my installation
of VmWare Player came before or after the problems started, but the only
entry for VmWare Player in msconfig is for hqtray, which I have now
deselected from startup. This had no effect.

Could VmWare itself be causing issues as processes for it are present in
Process Explorer (vmnat.exe, vmnetdhcp.exe and vmware-authd.exe)?

Martin