F
Frank D. Nicodem, Jr.
Just within the last week or so, I'm having a problem that I never had
before. When I go to shutdown Windows XP (or even if I'm just rebooting),
it won't shut down. It will go through all of the normal pattern of events
that I'm used to -- applications will close, icons will disappear from the
desktop, the normal desktop will go to the "blue screen" background with the
logo on it... then nothing.
Normally, at this point, I can count on a minute or so of system activity,
after which I'll see the system shut down. (Or, if I'm just doing a reboot,
it's at that point that it will start the reboot process.) Now, it just
hangs. I can wait and wait and wait as long as I want -- it's not going
anywhere.
How can I find out 1) what's causing it to hang there (since this has only
begun happening recently), and 2) what to do to fix the problem?
BTW, this isn't 100% of the time. If I boot a clean system, for example,
and immediately do a shutdown, it works just fine. And *some* of the other
times (usually if I haven't run too many applications), it may shut down
cleanly, as well. But mostly, if I've been up and running for a while, it
now hangs on shutdown. I have to power down the computer manually at that
point.
I'm running a fully-patched version of Windows XP on a Dell Inspiron 8200,
and keep most of my applications up to date, as well as keeping the system
fairly "clean" (e.g., getting rid of old files, temporary files, Internet
cache, etc.)
before. When I go to shutdown Windows XP (or even if I'm just rebooting),
it won't shut down. It will go through all of the normal pattern of events
that I'm used to -- applications will close, icons will disappear from the
desktop, the normal desktop will go to the "blue screen" background with the
logo on it... then nothing.
Normally, at this point, I can count on a minute or so of system activity,
after which I'll see the system shut down. (Or, if I'm just doing a reboot,
it's at that point that it will start the reboot process.) Now, it just
hangs. I can wait and wait and wait as long as I want -- it's not going
anywhere.
How can I find out 1) what's causing it to hang there (since this has only
begun happening recently), and 2) what to do to fix the problem?
BTW, this isn't 100% of the time. If I boot a clean system, for example,
and immediately do a shutdown, it works just fine. And *some* of the other
times (usually if I haven't run too many applications), it may shut down
cleanly, as well. But mostly, if I've been up and running for a while, it
now hangs on shutdown. I have to power down the computer manually at that
point.
I'm running a fully-patched version of Windows XP on a Dell Inspiron 8200,
and keep most of my applications up to date, as well as keeping the system
fairly "clean" (e.g., getting rid of old files, temporary files, Internet
cache, etc.)