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PC not switching off on clicking shutdown

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I have windows XP stand alone PC. All was well till a couple of days back. After working on the PC, it refuses to shutdown on clicking the shutdown button. Although the icons vanish (after almost two full minute) and it appears that the PC is all set to shutdown..it just does’nt. This problem does not occur when I open the computer and switch it off within say 2 minutes, but the moment I work longer, say for more than 15 minutes, rest assured it just refuses to shutoff. Mind you, the cursor still moves on the screen. The icons vanish and only the Wall paper remains on the screen.

I am desperate. please help.

Warm Regards to all

Gopi

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Clarifications

In reply to PC not switching off on clicking shutdown

Clarifications

How about telling us ………….

In reply to PC not switching off on clicking shutdown

………. what you did a couple of days ago that changed things? Did you notice it doing an autoupdate or something? Did it want to install updates as it was shutting down and you didn’t wait for it?

Think back…. what happened back then?

Recalling the sequence of events…….

In reply to How about telling us ………….

I have several times gone thtough the sequenece of events prior to that day. I cannot recall anything usual like auto updates while shutting down etc. I am at a loss really. Cant figure what has made the PC so sluggish during shutdown. I have tried all the usual …..clean disk and deleting temp files etc.,. but to no avail

Thanks for your concern.

I wonder if others have experienced this

Gopi

Time to Reload

In reply to Recalling the sequence of events…….

Back up your stuff and reload Windows. You might be able to do a repair.

re: problems shutting down.

In reply to Recalling the sequence of events…….

I have, on several occations, experienced the same thing. However, I just waited it out and it eventually shut itself down. In my case, it was usually caused by some program that has memory leaks and there’s not very much RAM left to do the shutdown process. I usually just booted back up and checked for updates for Windows, Adobe Reader or Java, or even the HP printer software, all of which can have an effect on the system if they need patches applied.

Do you notice everything running really slow before you shut down, like when closing a window it takes a long time to close itself?

How long has it been since you defraged or ran scandisk? If you go to my computer and right click the drive, under tools, have you run the disk cleanup lately?

Just a few thoughts.

Hm

In reply to PC not switching off on clicking shutdown

See if there is a BIOS update available. I have seen where that did the trick.

Shall reload windows……

In reply to Hm

Thanks all ..retro, thimbsup2 .everyone. I am planning just that..will reload windows after taking a backup..It will take a while trying to backup my files. But it may be worth the effort if nothing else works and I’ll hope and pray that in the meanwhile it just gets sorted out by itself.

Thanka all once again

Gopi

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