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I've hit a problem where Windows simply won't restart—it merely drops down into Locked mode with the session still active.

I've tried shutting down (as opposed to warm booting under restart) and running shutdown.exe from the command line. All have the same affect—the system Lock Screen appears immediately and the VM refuses to budge another inch toward an actual restart/shutdown.

Tracking this down promises to be a sticky one. Has anyone else seen this?

InteXX
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  • If you can, please read from another computer the event log. (c:\windows\system32\winevt\logs) – yagmoth555 Sep 24 '15 at 02:06
  • @yagmoth555: Thanks for the reminder. I found [this](http://www.itexperience.net/2012/09/04/troubleshooting-event-1073-the-attempt-to-power-off-pc-failed/). – InteXX Sep 24 '15 at 08:59
  • Nothing else ? as it tell a process can be clause. – yagmoth555 Sep 24 '15 at 12:54
  • @yagmoth555: Nothing else, no. We're going to be replacing the installation soon with R2, so we'll just live with it until then. The sequence described in the blog post isn't worth the trouble, at least for us. I was hoping it'd be something simple, but alas it was not to be. So thanks again. – InteXX Sep 24 '15 at 17:22

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This is pretty much a guess based on the information you've provided, but:

Use Task Manager or Process Explorer to look for unresponsive processes. I suspect a hung process is preventing shutdown.

Katherine Villyard
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    Thanks, I wish I had more information to provide. I'm not being stingy, promise :-) I'll give this a go and let you know. – InteXX Sep 23 '15 at 22:29
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    To add to Katherine's answer: run **sc query** to see if a service is hung. You can do this remotely with **sc \\servername query** if you can't log in. My money would be on windows update or trusted installer; it seems more common these days after updates. – Chris Sep 23 '15 at 23:21
  • @Chris: I probably should clarify... the system doesn't freeze or hang—it locks immediately without any pause or disk checking, as if I'd pressed Win+L on the keyboard instead of clicking Restart. Were you thinking I meant freeze or hang? Pardon any confusion. – InteXX Sep 24 '15 at 03:45
  • It's after hours now, so I was able to try this again. No luck. I can't reproduce it now. Apparently it only occurs intermittently or after the server's been running for a while. Note that it doesn't behave like a hung service or process. There's no pause at all—it drops into Screen Lock immediately, as though I'd pressed Win+L instead of clicking Restart. But it's restarting fine just now, which of course is all the more frustrating. I'm sure it'll happen again sometime soon enough. – InteXX Sep 24 '15 at 08:40