Why is my shutdown time so long?

Question

Running windows XP SP2 I can be waiting for up to 5 minutes after hitting the shut-down button until the machine actually switches off.

I have tried killing an non essential services/application before I shut down to see if that makes a difference but it doesn't appear to.

Can anyone suggest why the machine takes so long to close down and possible solutions (NOTE: To actually boot up the computer is extremely quick and I don't have many application/services starting up either)

Answer 1

There might be a way to fasten the shutdown by cutting the time for killing services (taken from here):

The first two settings can be found in the key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop. They are called HungAppTimeout and WaitToKillAppTimeout. You should also set the key AutoEndTasks to 1 if it is not set to this value already.

The timeout settings for Services can be found in the Registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control and is called WaitToKillServiceTimeout. The value is entered in miliseconds which means that the value 2000 should be entered if you want to set this to 2 seconds each.

Answer 2

Try going through device manager through your USB section and disable the setting to allow Windows to turn off the device to save power. This can sometimes cause a shutdown to hang. I had a laptop in last week that had the hanging shutdown and this corrected.

Answer 3

Are you a member of a domain? Roaming profiles?