Slow shutdown, no power off

[Guest]

Should have posted this much sooner....
A while back, maybe 6 months or so, my XP Pro system went from a 20-30
second shutdown and power off to a 50-60 second shutdown (solid blue screen,
no messages) and no power off. During shutdown the disk activity light is
on solid.

I suspect one of the automatic updates changed something. I have looked at
the various options suggested in this, and the general, list to fix the
power off problem, but none seem to apply.

The linux 'halt' command quite happily kills power when it's done so the
hardware is OK.

The registry has HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/Microsoft/Windows
NT/CurrentVersion/Winlogon/PowerdownAfterShutdown set to 1.

Neither Control Panel/ Power Options nor the Device Manager have options to
control power off.

Q1. What is XP doing with the disk at shutdown that takes so long?
Q2. How do I restore automatic power off?

TIA
Jim

 

[Guest]

1) You could check out + install UPHClean from MS->
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/837115

2) You could try the Clean-up function provided in
Windows Live which also cleans registry->
http://onecare.live.com/site/en-ca/center/cleanup.htm

 

[Guest]

Neither had a positive effect. UPHClean had no visible effect, and the scan
has *increased* the time the blue screen-no message box-solid disk activity
light takes from 40 seconds to nearly 70. Power off still does not work.

How do I find out what's happening???

Jim