Laptop not shutting down

I forgot to mention it is running XP SP2.

Windows gremlins at it again.

First, boot into safe mode and see if NB shuts down normally. If so, boot into normal mode, run msconfig and disable all startup items. Reboot and see if problem is resolved after reboot. If successful so far, start sequencing startup items back until culprit is identified.

Dalton

While Dalton is correct here is a MS Web Site that addresses the problem apparently this is a known issue and there are several pieces of hardware that can cause it which as yet do not have a fix for. Check out.

http://search.microsoft.com/search/results.aspx?st=b&na=88&View=en-us&qu=Windows+XP+not+shutting+down

Col

Have you tried logging on with a different user account? It may be a corrupt ntuser.dat file. If that doesnt fix it, try a sfc.exe /scannow. If it still persists I would expect a HW failure comingrun a checkdisk and see if the drive is failing. Some HP model notebooks have a high HDD failure rate or high heat problems. Try setting the bios to 'fan always on' and let it cool down. then boot it and shut down to see if it persists.

Go to Microsoft site and search for KB837115.
The "uphclean" works for me.

if your laptop is win xp pro,(home edition should be working too) you can tweak some registry to force it to shutdown

1) Start - Run - Regedit
Navigate to the following Registry key:
HKEY CURRENT USER\Control Panel\Desktop
Double click on the AutoEndTasks entry and replace the 0 with a 1 in the Value data text box

For the next two, if the dword value indicated does not exist, create it:

Double click on the WaitToKillAppTimeout entry in the right pane and change the Value data to 2000

Double click on the HungAppTimeout entry in the right pane and change the Value data to 1000

Reboot

If still having a problem, make the next change:

2) HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control
Right-click on WaitToKillServiceTimeout and change it to 2000

NOTE: The lowest value Windows will recognize is 1000 (1 second)

ADVISORY: While rare, the "WaitToKillService" tweak can cause problems. If an application is in the process of saving data and the associated service is stopped prematurely, the data will not be saved and may be lost.

what i would try is to flash bios to latest version and download and install latest version of all drivers

sounds like there are processes still running when windows thinks it has shut them down... Good ole Billy's software!!!

Try a Defrag first of all (the simplest solution is usually overlooked) then check all the process running in task manager (ctrl+alt+delete) and compare them against a process library
http://www.processlibrary.com/
http://www.liutilities.com/products/wintaskspro/processlibrary/
And see if you have any malicious processes running. If so get a decent AV & a decent spyware remover like Spybot S&D (http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/index.html)

If you're still having problems then you may want to look at regisrty editing, however i would avoid it wherever possible with such a new system.

This question was closed by the author