Hi All - My lovely wife is running a HP Compaq Presario with Vista Home Premium. We both generally leave our computers 'on', only shutting down completely during storms or if going away.
The HP will not shut shut down/restart normally......it gets to the 'shutting down' screen and then just hangs forever (this is not just Vista's notoriously slow shutdown process). I have to switch it off at the tower and then on reboot I get the usual message and list of options, I let it boot into Windows as normal and everything is okay. The computer is running fine otherwise, no problems nor other symptoms.
It is no biggee but it just ain't right. Any advice would be much appreciated.
cheers......JIM
Hi Jim:
I noticed that you had a post concerning Avast and no sound and that after you did a system restore your Skype and Avast both worked as advertised. Just wondering if after your system restore, has the shut down problem been restored as well?? Could be a possibility.
Hey Nightowl - Thanks for the reply...Different computer altogether mate. Sorry, I should have clarified, the Avast (no sound) problem was on [i:txjmj7yf]my[/i:txjmj7yf] custom built machine...this issue is with my wife's HP.
I have had a thought since my initial post...maybe a process in hanging on shutdown, if I can access the task manager during the shut down screen I may be able to view any running processes and identify the problem....what do you think?
JIM
Hi Jim:
I did some looking on your shut down problem. Here is a link that may be of some help.
http://www.vistarewired.com/2007/03/14/ ... is-so-slow
Hope this helps you out.
Jim, Shutdown problems are usually caused by programs not stopping properly, so you are headed down the right path. A good place to start with shutdown problems is actually the startup process. Eliminating extra (unneeded) programs from the startup process either fixes the problem or makes it easier to troubleshoot. The side benefit it your computer will start quicker and be a little more responsive.
I'll let you in on a secret... Startup programs are a good place to start when troubleshooting almost any problem.
Start>type "msconfig.exe in the text box. Hit Enter to open MSConfig. Look at the Startup Tab. If you post the entries we can tell you which ones you don't need to be running all the time.
If that doesn't work I tell you how to edit the registry and force programs to shutdown.
Thanks Dave - I have a very good startup manager installed (on both machines) and I can tell you, I have startup entries set to an absolute minimum. You wouldn't believe it, the last twice I have tried to shut down my wife's HP this has happened...I went to it this morning and tried to replicate the situation so I could have a bo peep and see if any processes were hanging and it insisted on shutting down okay, no problems.....Murphy's law!!!
She hadn't been on the computer this morning so I thought about what she would normally be doing...playing games was the answer, nothing fancy, just the ones built in to Vista. Next time she goes through a session, when she is finished I will hop on the machine and have a look and see if any associated processes remain running, both prior to shutdown and during.
thanks all for your help and advice,
JIM
Hey, Jim.
You should try the sleep function instead of shutting down. It literally takes, 20 seconds to go to sleep and 20 seconds to wake up and be ready to go. The only time I shut down is when I'm going on a trip or it's required by an update.
Hey Dave - This from my original post: [quote]We both generally leave our computers 'on', only shutting down completely during storms or if going away. [/quote]
I very seldom shutdown our computers.....just leave them switched on and in 'sleep' mode if not is use. Both times this has happened we were going away for an extended period.
thanks,
JIM
Oops, Missed that!
Hi Jim: Does your wife happen to have Zone Alarm Suite installed on her computer? The reason i ask is,i had the same problem you describe and i had to make a adjustment inside Zone Alarm.
Hi FLBoy - Thanks for the tip but no, there is no Zone Alarm on either of our computers. The strange thing is I cannot get the computer to do it again, try as I have, the rotten thing won't cooperate. I suppose that is a good thing but it doesn't help me diagnose what may be wrong....at this stage all I can do is put it down to a quirk and play wait and see.
thanks again,
JIM
Although the section is about XP shutdown issues, you may find some ideas here: http://www.aumha.org/win5/a/shtdwnxp.php
Also likely to help is to initiate verbose logging so as to be able to see what step is creating the "hang:" http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/18832 ... tdown.html
Ozbloke, I got so tired of trying to troubleshoot shutdown problems that I just bypassed the whole process and used the Windows shutdown command to force the issue. Over at [url=http://askthegeek.kennyhart.com:1xnq0u20]Askthe Geek[/url:1xnq0u20] "my computer won't shut down" is the all-time #1 question. So, I wrote an article you can download that gives step by step instructions on making your own custom shutdown command (written for XP, but Vista has the same command).
You can download it from [url:1xnq0u20]http://askthegeek.kennyhart.com/Content/shutdown.pdf[/url:1xnq0u20].
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