Windows XP

[Chillie]

I can not get my windows to shut down/off ,it just stays on the windows is shutting down screen,I have emptied my recyle bin, still the same. Any suggestion's anyone.

[theweemidget]

might need to reformat

[Geo]

This any use?

http://www.activewin.com/winxp/tips/shutdown/3.shtml

[blueivy]

Chillie,

I get this message quite a lot on some machines and on other I never see it. If you have the time to troubleshoot the problem, then these are the things to look for:

1. When shutting down, do you ever see the End Task message popping up? It could just be that there is a task in the system that simply hanging. If you keep seeing the End Task button, find out which task it is and uninstall that program. Reboot. Shut the system down again and see if it works again. If not, keep trying until you don't see the End Task button (ie. you now don't know what is causing the problem).
2. Obvious one, and I'm sure you've thought about it, but I need to mention it. What was the last piece of software you installed before it started happening. Might be an idea to uninstall that and see if that fixes it.
3. Disconnect all your peripherals (ie. everything USB, parallel port, etc.) and then try shutting down. If that doesn't work then I would suggest leaving them disconnected, restarting the machine (without them) and then try shutting down.
4. Before shutting down have you closed all applications (including those in the System Tray)? While just shutting the machine down with software running generally doesn't cause problems, some applications don't like it.
5. Have you noticed a pattern (ie. you use an application and then it causes problems when you shut down)?

My general advice to customers when this happens falls into these two peices - however 9 times out of 10 I end up at the second choice.

1. Use System Restore to restored your PC back to a time when you know it was working fine.
2. Dig out the restore or operating system CD's, wipe the system (if you can - a system restore generally does that anyway so be warned if you don't have backups!) and reinstall from scratch.

While options 1-5 above might save you reinstalling it is also very time consuming (could take days or weeks to do if it's only done ad-hoc) whereas reinstalling the OS and the important apps takes me between 1 and 2 hours (depending on a lot of things - PC speed being a critical one).

Le me know if this was helpful or not and whether you managed ot find out what was causing it.