Windows shutdown, restart and boot take forever?

Another place to look regarding a long shutdown time would be the local security policy for clearing the virtual memory file upon shutdown (Administrative Tools, Local Security Policy, Security Options); if it is enabled it can take a long time to shutdown.

Hi, Dave:

I guess you could walk them through MSCONFIG, but there are so many combinations that someone would end up with more problems.

It's also known that Symantec's product, especially Norton Utilities & AntiVirus, cause an extreme slowdown in boot time, so there are probably a lot more that I just haven't found yet.

Keep up the good work.

Aloha!
Ken

>>and only "really" restarting them every few days. That is another advantage of XP; while Windows 98 became unstable after being "up" for more than 72 hours, XP can hibernate and wake up for significant periods of time without problems.
<<

Rubbish! We run Win98 on five different systems here -- and for weeks at a time without rebooting. As you commented earlier in your article, it depends on what trash you are running (allowing to load in the background) how fast a system will boot or shut down. Also, recall your comment about XP being a resource hog.

Best,

Dave, start up can be seriously delayed if Windows if prefetching the whole world. Go into registry and edit the prefet section to only fetch the OS files. Or even do no prefetch if you want. I use a setting of 2 which prefetchs only the OS files.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters

key name EnablePrefetcher
0—Disable
1—Application Launch Prefetch
2—Boot Prefetch
3—Prefetch everything

see the article at techrepublic.com for details on exactly what prefetch does and how to edit the registry.

http://techrepublic.com.com/5100-6270_11-5165773.html?tag=e064

My own XP-Pro system used to take a long time to shut down compared to my old Windows 98/SE setup.
I searched the internet for Tweaks and speed secrets. These are all listed in my XP Tweaks as found on my webpage. My XP-Pro system now shuts down in 8 sec's flat. (even if I've left my dial-up line open and O.E. running)
I do use AVG, MS-Anti Spyware, Trojan Hunter and Spyware Sweeper, that run all the time as TSR's.
I repeat the process of tweaking the registry of all my customers and I see like results on all systems. I've seen several PC's catch on fire, so mine gets shut down when I'm not here to watch it.
God Bless,
Wayne (theShadow)

I had the same problem after installing a couple of SATA drives. I knew that I should increase the Power Supply, which I did. I replaced the 350 watt with an Antec TrueBlue 2.0 480 watt. I am back to a speedy bootup, restart and shutdown.

Hi Dave,

I originally requested help with the slow shutdown problem. As suggested, I visited Microsoft and downloaded the uphclean tool and am happy to report that it has cured my problem. My shutdown time has returned to normal. I recommed this tool to anyone having slow shutdown times with the "Saving Files" box displayed. Thanks a million for the information.

P.S. Keep up the great work.

James

My XP machine was not shutting down and the "Ci service" was reporting errors in the Event Viewers application log. I went into "Services" and set the cisvc.exe program (Indexing Services) to "disable" instead of automatic startup type. My XP machine now shutsdown cleanly instead of "hanging" and the "Windows is shutting down..." screen.

Hi Dave,
I have just had a machine passed to me to have a look at. It runs XP and had a memory upgrade a few months ago. The memory is the same frequency. Since the memory upgrade this machine goes through post no problem but takes anything up to an hour to boot then a further half hour for the task bar to load. Shut down is the same. I have tried running different memory in it and the problem is the same. Any ideas on this problem would be most welcome.
Cheers.
Charlie

Charlie, I don't need to tell you that's an extraordinarily long time to wait. I'd try reinstalling Windows and see what happens, I just wonder if it's a preponderance of spyware or something...

I have a problem with my PC shutting down - it is an AMD 2700 / 1.5Gb PC 2700 RAM - Often takes 5 minutes to switch off completely and about three minutes to come to life - HELP !!

Steve, I would check for spyware, viruses and any sort of "disk save" utility that might be checkpointing your filesystem as you shut down (Norton Utilities, for example).

I have a new machine with intel915GLV, 40GB,512 DDR Ram with window 2000 server.

But some day's now i facing problem in starup on PC and Shutdown. IT takes a about 5 minutes to take a restart.

Jim John

Dave, when i restart my pc it goes normaly but it shuts down doesnt restart like u pressed shutdown not restart, so what could be my problem. pc spec. 3.0 Celeron D.M/B intel 101. 256 ram, 40 Gb hdd. combo drive. thx

Have A21m Thinkpad with Windows 2000 Pro. When Ending Program - Explorer.EXE I get a message "The program is not responding" and the only way I can shutdown is by clicking on "End task". Any ideas why and troubleshooting tips? Any help appreciated.

Thanks fixed my problems with XP slow shutdown. If microsoft verification is an issue you can get the program from

http://www.snapfiles.com/download/dluphcservice.html

D

my computer takes 10 minutes at the "windows is starting up" screen to load! i cleaned out all viruses and took off most programs in startup on msconfig. it dosnt take long for the programs to load it just takes forever to start up windows

All of a sudden I ca't display the fullWrite screen.It ohly shows bottom half. Can't pull down the top portion

Hi,
I have a Dell SmartStep 250N computer. The problem I have is that the computer automatically shuts down 10 minutes after it is turned on. If I turn it back on immediately, it works well without shutting down. I have read all about the overheating problems with this model, my question is why does my computer shudown so early, and is my problem an overheating problem?

I have a Dell lattitude laptop with Windows 2000 running, after the OS becomes active; within a few minutes it receives an error and keeps restarting. Any troubleshooting ideas?

December 13th, 2006
Maybe you can help me? My PC take a long time to shut down.. Sometimes I have to do, Start, and Shut Down, 2 or 3 times. It seems that certain items or programs, etc, are running in the background, and maybe if I find them and shut them off, then my machine will shut down the 1st time like it used to do, just a short time ago. I am running on Windows XP, Home Edition, Service Pak 2. I have a question for you, If I go to Start, Run, and MSConfig, in this Utility Program, next to the Start-up pull down menu, there is a pull down menu to the left of the start up menu. My qustion is: If I uncheck a certain box, or boxes, will this correct my problem? and if this is the correct pull down menu, which boxes do I uncheck to correct my problem? Looking forward to your reply,
My E-mail address is: Mellw@Adelphia.Net
Any help you could give me would greatly be appreciated.

Thank you,

Mel Waldman

LONG SHUTDOWN WITH WINDOWS XP

I researched until I was blue in the face with the XP long shutdown issue. I found after 6 months of playing around that it was a driver for the network card that I have. I can,t tell you exactly how I found it, or that MS support was any help, but removing the card fixed the problem imeadiatly.
I have XP Pro with a NetGear ethernet card. When talking to NetGear on the phone for about an hour, I discovered they have no drivers at all for the 64 Bit OS's. Check all of your Network Interfaces and Drivers.
Fred

Hi Dave, I am having a problem with booting my pc. When I power up I get the post boot screen come up and then it stops after telling me the CPU information for about 2 mins before displaying memory information then it load fine from there. I have tried updating the bios but no good. I am running a P4 2.6HT which I overclocked to 2.8ghz about 3 months ago but it has been running fine until now. Any tips would be great thanks.

Dave,

I recently discovered a program on my computer which I did not install, the program name was "Famliy-Kelogger", I suspected that it might be a virus. I made several attemtps to find it and remove it with no such luck. I downloaded the Trend Micor House Call, scanned the system and removed the Famliey-Kelogger. After which I decided to buy Virus software protection, and I ended up downloading a 90 days free trial of Norton Symantic program. I set up scanning schedule for my machine for late that night, the next morning, the scanning action was still runing after several hours from start, when I attmepted to stop the scanning process I discovered that every thing was frozen and there was response at all. So I did a hard reboot on the system but when the system tried to load Windows XP Pro it took a good 45 min. from seeing Windows Logot to seeing the "Welcome to Windows".

After getting into the desk top, I uninstalled "Norton Symantic" and did a check disk on the machine. Now the machine takes 2+ minutes from seeing Windows Logo to seeing Welcome to Windows which was not the case before installing Norton Symantic.

Any suggestion you can make to help resolve this outstanding slow boot issue will be much appreciated. Looking forward to you answer, and thank you so much for your support.

TREG

my computer simply wont shut down or restart...it gets to the "Windows is shutting down..." then stays there until I manually turn it off (press and hold the power button) I use windows XP, and run the following on startup:

"C:\Windows\System32\ctfmon.exe"
"C:\Program Files\Digital Media Reader\Shwiconem.exe"
"RunDLL32.exe" C:\Windows\System32\NvCpl.dll,NvStartup
"Nwiz.exe" /install
ZHotKey.exe
RTHDCPL.exe
ALCMTR.exe
"RunDLL32.exe" C:\Windows\System32\NvMctray.dll,NvTaskBarInit
"C:\Program Files\Webroot\SpySweeper\SpySweeperUI.exe"
"C:\Program Files\Common Files\Symantec Shared\ccAp.exe"
"C:\Program Files\Java\ire1.5.0._11\bin\jusched.exe"
"C:\Program Files\Common Files\Symantec Shared\PIF\{B8E1DD85-8582-4C61-B58F-2F227FCA9A08}\PIFSvc.exe" /a/m "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Symantec Shared\PIF\{B8E1DD85-8582-4C61-B58F-2F227FCA9A08}\AlertEng.dll"
C:\Program Files\Bigfix\bigfic.exe

Hi Dave,

My sister's PC uses Windows 2000 (I think). When she tries to open IE she gets an error stating her Windows XP license has been stolen/hijacked/lost (or something like that) and then asks for her credit card number to repurchase her Windows XP license. Since she doesn't have Win XP she knew it was probably a scam and tried to X out of the window. When she did this the PC shut down and now does the same thing each time she boots up and tries to open IE. Any ideas?

Hello Dave,

my pc is really slow at loading and closing. I reckon that I have far too many services running (about 80). Unfortunately I have no idea which I can disable and which I should leave alone. I went into msconfig and this is the list. Bugger, wont paste, they are mainly microsoft based but have some from symantec and adobe. Have you got any idea how I can send you a list of my services please?

WHY DOES MY SERVER RESTARTS EVERY FEW MINUTES

Umm... Well I seem to be having the same problem as most on this page - slow boot and shutdown times. My situation is different however, because when I first bought my toshiba sattelite P100 series notebook, everything was fine including quick startup and shutdown. Over a short period of time the computer drastically slowed down, most noticeably on boot (sits for a long time at the black screen with the windows logo), but during the operation of XP as well. I repaired the registry, searched for spyware, bla bla, same stuff anyone would do in my case, but no change occured. Eventually I decided to "restore" the system with a CD toshiba included when I bought the computer. Not wanting to remove all partitions (I had linux installed on 1) I decided to only restore drive C:. I figured it should solve the problem because that is the system's logical drive. It didn't though, and windows remains slow. I am quite confused, but I still don't want to completely redo the whole computer and destroy all partitions. Any advice?

Shutting pc. PC shows that it shuts,screen goes black, but pc still runs. I have to manually shut it down by holding push button. Then on start it hangs on booting. I have to try start it many times. I running Vista Ultimate. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

stutdown time it appears following
the drive is not ready for use;its door may be open please check drive A;and make sure that a disk is inserted and that the drive door is closed
cance try again continue...
next one is stutdown time is also very slow
plz solve my problem

Hi Dave,
I have a problem regarding system restart. While working on my system Pentium 4 (3.0 Ghz)HT,512 MB RAM, the machine abruptly Restarts and continuously reboots, (sort of forever loop) till I Off the power.

my pc windows xp and when i restart my pc using reset button i got the message as turnoff power and reinstall the jumper in normal mode position. why it is coming. what problem.

The site below has some useful speed tweaks all displayed on one page for quick access.
It is the most useful page for tweaks I have come across.

http://www.pccallouts.co.uk/freexpspeedtweaks.html

It covers 18 Windows XP Speed Tweaks.

They include:

1. Remove/Replace Windows Background image
2. Edit Boot.ini to disable GUI boot
3. Disk Cleanup
4. Disk Defragmenter
5. Visual Performance
6. Windows Explorer Performance
7. Applications Autorunning on Startup
8. Cleaning the Windows Registry
9. Remove viruses, trojans and spyware
10. Apply Windows updates
11. Disable performance counters
12. Optimize your internet connection
13. Remove windows fonts
14. Disabling indexing service
15. Turning off system restore
16. Speed up boot sequence
17. Disable unnecessary services
18. Setting manual IP addresses

Hi dave,

my pc shuts down after 15 minutes on the internet. It happens all the time.
Can you tell me what the problem could be?

oh this problem is even worse with vista it takes forever to restart:( i think it also depends of how fast the computer hard drive is

i have a xp os when i used to shut down my pc it became restart i cant shut down my pc what to do plz help me

regards
shailendra

Hi,

My system is restarting. when i am shutting down my system.

Thanks, Keshav

Intel d945gcpe :Turn off power reinstall the jumper in normal mode position

Windows XP Professonal 64Bit Edition...slow shut downs, I notice sometimes apps not closing and freezing, cursor can move, and only logging off then shutting down allows a fast shutdown.

Well, I wish I had a 5 minute shutdown time.

My HP laptop Pentium 4 Win XP Pro Media Center Edition Ver.2002 Service Pack 2 - 3.40 GHz 2.00 GB Ram. 7.5K RPM 150GB HD.

Takes a whopping 29 minutes to shutdown!!
BUT a normal startup time.

I googled "how to speed up shutdown time" and one of the many fixes was to go to the "RUN" -> regedit.exe but I found that it wouldn't pull up.

I did a search for it and discovered that I have (2) regedit.exe

Then I discovered that the newer regedit.exe was put on my computer when I TRIED TO INSTALL: Service Pack 3 -(it had the same date and time so I figured that it had to be it). Also it was in: C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download\...(long string of numbers and letters).

So I copied the older regedit.exe that was in: C:I386 and put it in: C:\Windows

1) DON'T install service pack 3
2) I tried 3 times and got: Error Access Denied - and it automatically uninstalled the files it tried to install. But I guess not really, because I had 2 regedits.
3)I don't know yet if fixing my regedit will fix the VERY SLOW shutdown time becaues I wanted to write this first... Here we gooooooo!!!!!

I will write back if it works, if not - I'm going to do the: User Profile Hive Cleanup service.

DAVE (Ft. Laud.)

I HAVE A PROBLEM MY PC DIDN'T BOOT UP SOME TIMES AND THE SCREEN STILL BLACK AND I MUST PUSH THE RESTART BUTOON TO OPEN IT