Win XP won't shut down

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CouGaR

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I'm setting up my old computer in my sister's room and for some reason Windows XP won't shut down when I tell it to. Here's what happens:

I go to Start -> Turn Off Computer -> Turn Off, then Windows goes to the normal blue screen which says "Saving you settings" and then "Windows is shutting down.."

Normally, the system shuts down after that. Well, after reading that for 10 minutes I figured waiting any longer wouldn't change anything. I powered it off manually, restarted, and tried to turn it off again. Same thing happens, and it never did that before.

By the way, that computer is and has been free of viruses, spyware, etc... I have Norton SystemWorks and Personal Firewall, along with Windows AntiSpyware on there.

I have no clue why it won't shut down properly. The same thing happens when I tell it to restart. Can anyone help?
 
How much RAM is there? Might be the system is freezing up. Double check for spyware with other spyware checkers like Ad Aware and\or Spybot Search and Destroy. Just cause MS says there is no spyware doesnt mean there isnt any. I have found spyware with Spybot right after a MS scan that said i was clean. Did the same with Ad Aware. It might also be that the system cant ahndle XP. Does it exceed the system requirements? It should have at least 256 if not 512 RAM. On 256 it runs slow and takes a while for things to happen that is why i suggest at least 512 for XP.
 
Are you closing all running applications before trying to reboot/shut down? It sounds as though you have a process running in the background that may be causing your PC to hang on reboot/shut down. Open your task manager through "Ctrl+Alt+Delete" and close any non-essential Windows processes 1 by 1 and try rebooting/shutting down after you end each process.

Make a list of each running process and check off each one as its closed and you try rebooting/shutting down. Go here for a list of Windows processes to help you figure out what to leave and what to close.

TASK LIST PROGRAMS

If you find the offending process make a note of it and close it down each time you go to reboot/shut down. If it's entirely non-essential you may even be able to completely disable it through "msconfig". Post back and let me know what you find.
 
Makaveli213 said:
It might also be that the system cant ahndle XP. Does it exceed the system requirements? It should have at least 256 if not 512 RAM. On 256 it runs slow and takes a while for things to happen that is why i suggest at least 512 for XP.

When I said old computer, I meant the one I bought late last year.
It has a 2.8 Ghz Hyper-Threading Pentium 4 with 512 MB RAM and Media Center Edition.

It just recently started doing that. I'll try scanning it for spyware with another program, but I doubt it's spyware because I've used Firefox, AntiSpyware, and Personal Firewall, and those programs blocked everything, but I'll check again just in case. I'll update this thread later today. Thanks for the help so far.
 
Alright guys, here's an update. I ran another Spyware scan from another program, and it found 1 simple adware and it removed it. That wasn't the problem though, like I thought. However, I installed a wireless adapter for my network, and then I was able to download the latest updates from Microsoft. Once I did that, it asked me reboot. Same thing happened, but that was the last time! Everything works great now. Thanks for the tips.
 
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