W2000 Professional O/S slow shutdown
 

I would appreciate any ideas. My W2000 Professional O/S is very very slow to shut down. Have 256 MB RDRAM, 1.7 GHZ, 20GB HD.

By slow, I mean it typically takes 3-4 minutes to shut down.

Start-up is fine, and otherwise there do not seem to be any problems. HD is regularly defragmented. Virus free with current Norton protection.

Thanks in advance.

:confused:

which programs are open at the time you selct the shut down procedure?

Make a list and try to shut down program by program, each at a step befor you run down windows.

check the task manager for any open programs which may have closed the graphical user interface but task manager still reports as NOT RESPONDING.

shut down ICQ before you shut down windows...hefty resource hungry programs like Outlook or shared file transfers (edonkey etc)...

was it always like that or did it start suddenly? what did you install / uninstall just before it began?

from clicking shut down to power off, it should be no more than about 5 -10 secs, unless huge files still open and perhaps saved as tmp need to be saved to the harddrive properly.

Normally, when I select shutdown there are no programs open, or at the most Outlook Express. I can not identify anything installed immediately prior to this occuring. This has been going on for approximately six weeks.

I reformatted approximately 2-1/2 months ago, and all was OK then. This problem started a few weeks later.

When I command to shut down, nothing happens for about 20-30 seconds, then I get the "not responding" window. Then that window disappears about 20 seconds later, then another 2-3 minutes to shut down.

Thank you,

:confused:

What's 'not responding' ?
You might also want to clean up OE files from time to time (on the Files menu).

As PaperTiger said, look at the blue bar of the Not Responding pop-up and see which program it is.
If it is Outlook Express than it cannot respond as it is still busy closing whatever was open. I.E. if you just looked at an HTML mail, there is a good chance that also the mail itself is only 10kB large, the actual load caused by links may be a manifold of this and OE needs to close all files first before it shuts down...
I do not work with OE but I saw (if my memory is correct) very recently an upgrade for OE somewhere mentioned as causing grieve...
But first, check what the window tells you.

One more thing, since W95 all younger versions of Windows have a key in the registry where the system is forced to present this pop-up window after 20 seconds. It is easy to change this setting but I do not recommend this as a program still busy closing down properly induces this window to appear and an inexperienced user may be offered to hit the SHUT DOWN NOW too early and valuable work may vanish bypassing the recycle bin....

You could try the small utility called EndItAll available at:

EndItAll (Freeware)

I see from the link above, this is a new version of the one I currently use. I haven't tried this version yet but the original was very useful for shutting down all open programs such as firewalls, antivirus etc. etc prior to shutting down the system. It protects (by default) a couple of essential programs and also allows you to protect whatecer else you wish but does help to ensure a very quick shutdown.

Best!
HA

Just tried to download from the above link and I was prompted to "join" PCMag.

This link works without submitting any info on yourself:

EndItAll2

Best!
HA

H/A, thank you, I will give it a try when I return home tonight.

:) :) :)