Windows 7: PC hangs at shutdown

--SOLVED--

The culprit of my hanging shutdowns was a cheap PCI to USB card.



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Hi everyone,
I'm a new guy with a problem.

My PC hangs at shutdown, indefinitely. I am running Windows 7 RC1 and when I click the shutdown button in the start menu it logs off normally, then exits to the screen that says 'Shutting Down' and stays there. As far as I can tell nothing is actually happening, no HDD access etc.

I think I can point the finger of blame to one (or both) of two new pieces of hardware I installed yesterday that could have caused this.
Firstly, I installed a cheapo graphics card (Gigabyte HD 4350) which is powered by an ATI Radeon HD 4350 GPU, and so has installed with itself a bunch of ATI drivers and a piece of software called ATI Catalyst.
I have updated the drivers from their website to the very latest Windows 7/Vista ones, but my PC still won't shutdown. Although the card and software all works fine, I still suspect it is something from ATI causing this problem.

The other thing I installed yesterday (although I would be surprised if this were the problem) was a USB PCI card, popped it into a spare PCI slot and I have an extra 4 USB ports. No software needed obviously. That is working fine as well.

I did actually install one other thing yesterday, although this can't have caused the problem. It was an Antec Earthwatts 380W PSU.

Funnily enough, once the PC hangs at shutdown and I can see there is nothing going on anymore, I can simply hold down my PC's power button and it will turn off - without consequence - i.e. Windows sees this as a normal shutdown and doesn't flag up the error screen of 'Windows was not shut down properly' or whatever it is, when I next boot up.

Anyways, if anyone could help I would be very grateful, I assume you'll need some more detailed information, so just lemme know exactly what and I'll post it up ASAP.

Thanks,
Rory.

I had the same problem with my new build a few yrs back. After troubleshooting, I said the heck with it. A few months passed by and tried fixing it by calling ASUS. After getting back and forth with ASUS(i thought the mobo was the problem), they pinpointed me to the Power Supply. I was very skeptical but then found out a few PS werent compatible with the motherboard. And the problem turned out to be PS related. Since a PS came with my new case, I used that instead and problem solved.

Mmm, interesting idea.
I see no reason why this PSU should have a problem, it is a 20+4 pin connector that detaches and plugs into the 20-pin socket on my motherboard, it is a powerful enough PSU for my very modest needs, and it is from a reputable and reliable brand.

Well, I have attached some screenshots showing my currently running processes, services, and the startup programs I have enabled.

First thing you should try is manually end processes "MOM.exe" and "CCC.exe" (right click and choose "end process")
Then try to shutdown system.If that works pm me and we'll go from there.

I have had issues with Windows 7 not being able to stop services after installing drivers causing shutdown to hang.In my case it was sound drivers and I had to write a script that ran at shutdown forcing audio services to stop.

You may also want to try ending process "SOUNDMAN.exe" and try shutdown since Windows 7 seems to have problems ending audio services with a lot of sound cards, although I'm not aware of any issues with realtek.

If all else fails remove the pci card you recently installed.

Hi billdo,
thanks for your reply.

I tried ending all three of those processes and then shutting down, but my PC still hung.
I will try removing both the graphics card and the USB PCI card tomorrow (if I get the time) and report back on the outcome.

Leave the ATI card in. If you stopped the CCC,MOM processes chances are that is not the problem.I would bet on the pci usb card. I don't know what model you have, but from my experience in the past when researching to buy one I noticed most were very cheap and outdated with very little support.The one I purchased worked fine in XP but had flakey drivers that caused problems with vista.
If problem still persist after removing usb pci card, then you may want to try what ChrisNYC suggests and look at power supply.

I removed the PCI USB card earlier today, and hey presto my PC shuts down fine.
Bizarrely, the thing does work with my scanner plugged in, but anything else just fails, so it is definitely flakey like you said.

It was a cheapo card so I didn't expect much, and I will now send it back and get a better one with some up to date vista/7 drivers.

Thanks for your help billdo,
Rory.

I've been pulling my hair for a couple of days on the same issue (on Windows 7 64). After reading this thread, I pulled a USB/1394 el cheapo ebay combo card I had installed many moons ago and the computer now shuts down and restarts normally. Strange though - that card had worked fine with both XP Pro 32 and Vista Ultimate 32.

What a pain!
Glad to see this thread helped you out though.