Windows 7: Windows takes a long time to shut down

I have a Toshiba Satellite C655 running Windows 7 64 bit. A week and a half ago it started taking over a minute to shut down. It started around the time I installed optional updates for Microsoft Security Essentials, my anti-virus program. I uninstalled it, shut the computer down and it still takes over a minute to shut down. Went into safe mode and reinistalled it there, still took over a minute to shut down. My drivers are all up to date. I think that it may have something to do with an application taking to long to finish uo what it's doing. When looking at processes under task manager, there are 9 separate processes for Google Chrome. I'm attaching a screen shot of task manager.

This is when Chrome is open. When it's not, the task manager shows one process from Chrome at 5,316 KB.

How long was the shutdown process prior to the now more lengthly time?

Usually 15-20 seconds. I looked at event viewer and there are two administrative events at the same time I shut down. They are:
User Profile service
Windows detected your registry file is still in use by other applications or services. The file will be unloaded now. The applications or services that hold your registry file may not function properly afterwards.

DETAIL -
1 user registry handles leaked from \Registry\User\S-1-5-21-4196284055-3908763261-3142770655-1001:
Process 2980 (\Device\HarddiskVolume2\Windows\SysWOW64\svchost.exe) has opened key \REGISTRY\USER\S-1-5-21-4196284055-3908763261-3142770655-1001

WLAN AutoConfig
WLAN AutoConfig service has successfully stopped.

Both events occur every time I shut down and there are entries for both dating back to August and September but it's been taking forever to shut down since a week and half ago.

I don't get why you have chrome.exe running when the browser is not in use. It should be a bunch of chrome.exe running or none. I would concentrate my efforts there. I've been using chromium snapshots over a year and I never see orphan chrome.exe just hanging around. If you kill one they all go away.

This is a shot in the dark. The system's cached memory may have been changed, I wouldn't know how, to flush on shutdown. You can check it as follows;

1. Start Registry Editor (Regedt32.exe).
2. Change the data value of the ClearPageFileAtShutdown value in the following registry key to a value of 0:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management
If the value does not exist, add the following value:
Value Name: ClearPageFileAtShutdown
Value Type: REG_DWORD
Value: 0
This change does not take effect until you restart the computer.

HTH

I have the same problem I have the same specs as you and the same laptop.