Windows XP Home Lockup & Shutdown Problems

[Archquark]

A friend who has Windows XP Home running on his machine has had several
problems in the past week with lockups and not shutting down. He has run
Chkdsk and no errors were found. He ran his virus checker ( Avast ) and
again no errors were found. He used the Restore program and successfully
restored his computer which resulted in the lockups while running from
occurring again, but his computer will now not shutdown. He reverts to
shutting it down manually, which I explained can cause more problems.
I told him he should have tried the safe mode option to restart in the last
good configuration first but at that point he had already used Restore. I
have e-mailed him the Microsoft article:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/308029.
Is there any other things he could try?
I will attempt to try and help him today and any constructive instruction
would be appreciated.

 

[Andrew E.]

99% of the time a pc fails to shutdown is hardware related.Youre best
bet,with power off to pc,remove youre add-ins 1 @ a time,the problem
should get solved this way.Also,boot to xp cd,recovery console,type:
CHKDSK C: /R Once thru type:EXIT All this being that the pc hardware itself
is in ok condition.

 

[Leonard Grey]

You've described all the fixes he's tried...but not what may be causing
the problem(s) in the first place. Without knowing that, your friend is
flailing in the dark and possibly causing more harm to his computer.

Unless he's got some reasonable ideas about what's causing his
problem(s) in the first place, he should show his computer to a
professional as soon as possible.

 

[Leonard Grey]

"99% of the time a pc fails to shutdown is hardware related..."

That's incorrect, and another example of the ridiculous advice dispensed
by Andrew E.

 

[Olórin]

It's worth a look in the Event Viewer to see if anything is being flagged up
by the system as a possible culprit.

Click on Start > Run > type "eventvwr.msc" and press Enter; have a look
through the Application and System logs for any suspects.