Hangs on shut down.

Recently my computer has started to hang on shutdown... Sometimes it takes a long time then it shuts down, other times, I believe I've gone to work and come back and it's still stuck.

It doesn't stick at the these programs are open screen, it goes to the shut down background and just says please wait.

Also since this started happening, and I just shut it down by holding the power button (after it hangs for too long), when turning it on, it stops in the bios screen and says
*Warning: System BOOT Fail*
Your system last boot fail or POST interrupted
Please enter setup to load default and reboot again.
F1 to continue
DEL to enter Setup

I just hit f1, then select windows to start normal (since it didn't shutdown properly I get the option of safemode).

I haven't changed any hardware recently.

I'll give it a shot, thanks :)

I was having the same problem, and it turned out to be the "Acronis True Image Monitor", I uninstalled A.T.I. and my computer shut down normally. I repeated it a couple times, startup-shutdown etc... and no problems. Reinstalled A.T.I. and it seems to be great... So Far. So if you have A.T.I. installed, try dissabling it and see what happens, and if it shuts down, do a reinstall of A.T.I. I don't know why it went awry in the first place, but at least it seems to be working ok now.

Thanks for both suggestions. I don't seem to have that program, and the scan found no problems.

Recently I have started having other issues as well... I use nexus dock and it has been crashing. Also chrome has been crashing. sometimes the buttons at the top dissapear for a while before it comepletely crashes. I just checked, my video drivers (nvidia) were updated from windows update 26/11/2010... I wonder if that may be the issue...?

I also can't seem to get task manager to open with the shortcut? (ctrl shift esc is it?) and ctrl alt delete is not doing anything...

I'm using microsoft security essentials, it hasn't found anything wrong yet...