Topic: XP Pro Shutdown

[Argee]

I'm running XP Pro (SP2 + all updates) on a Mirrored RAID. It's always been extremely quick to fire up and shut down. It still fires up quickly (< 25 seconds), but recently the shutdown time has increased from around 20 seconds to around 50. Any change in my perfectly stable setup causes me concern, it's not about losing the time!

The extra time is taken up in a specific part of the shut-down process, that between "Saving settings" and "Windows is shutting down." Previously, the icons went, then the dialog box appeared, stayed up, just the wording changed. Now, the icons go, then the box appears very briefly, then disappears, reappearing 25 to 30 seconds later with the "Shutting down" wording.

I've tried all the usual stuff, including disabling the "Clear Pagefile" command, checking the exit sound file, plus a couple of other tips from here. Because it's in such a specific place, I wondered if anyone else had experienced this and found out the cause.

If I enabled Dr. Watson, would this give me any better idea what/why?

TIA

Ray.

[Serenity]

Hi Ray and    one of our regular "techies" will be around soon and may hopefully be able to address your pc problems, in the meantime please feel free to browse the forum and contribute to posts as you wish 

[Sandra]

Hi Ray,
I have been having a similar problem with a friends pc for ages now, in fact sometimes it wont actually shut down at all 

I went round this afternoon and tried this to see if I could identify where it was hanging :

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/232575

Unfortunately I used the winlogon.exe from her recovery XP Home cd and not from my CD which I used when I reinstalled the OS last year.
This made the pc unable to start, even in safe mode, to undo what I had done 
I had to do a repair install with my own CD again later, so I dont know if this would have helped or not 

If you try it and it finds anything that helps let me know please 

[Argee]

Given your experience, I don't think I'll try that, thanks, Sandra!

I've dealt with ctfmon.exe which seemed to have been causing a bit of the delay.

I'm not right back to square one, but the difference is now very small, so even I'll live with it, I think.

Ray.

[Simon]

What security software are you using, Ray?  Sometimes they can be affected by a dodgy update, and be slow to shut down.  I had a similar problem with the 2006 version of F-Secure, but the 2007 version if fine.  There is also a hack, which can be found here, which may help to speed up the shutdown process, but personally, I would be reluctant to mess about too much for the sake of a few seconds.

[Argee]

What security software are you using, Ray?  Sometimes they can be affected by a dodgy update, and be slow to shut down.  I had a similar problem with the 2006 version of F-Secure, but the 2007 version if fine.

I was using Agnitum's Outpost Pro v4 as a software firewall, but I've abandoned that until it will work with version 10 of Logitech's webcam software. I'm behind a NAT router now anyway, so I'm not bothered about it. For anti-viral stuff I'm using AVG's free version, with AdAware Pro (I'm a beta "tester"), with SpyBot Search & Destroy occasionally brought into play. The problem didn't seem related to any update or software change, that's what I found so disconcerting.

There is also a hack, which can be found here, which may help to speed up the shutdown process, but personally, I would be reluctant to mess about too much for the sake of a few seconds.

Thanks for the link. Interesting, I thought I'd pass, but I tried it anyway and the shutdown is now around 15 seconds! Brilliant - thanks again.

Ray.

[Sandra]

Given your experience, I don't think I'll try that, thanks, Sandra!

It says in the article that you have to use the same winlogon.exe as the installed version Ray.
I made the mistake of assuming I had used my friends CD when I reinstalled XP and used the file from that, otherwise there wouldnt have been a problem.

As you say though it doesnt sound like its taking too long to shut down now so I would be tempted to leave it as it is.