Windows 7 64bit random crash on shutdown

Hey guys,

Got a bit of a problem and was wondering if anyone could help me out.

I built a new machine a couple of months back, except for some minor teething issues it's been running stable.

However, the past few days my machine has been crashing while shutting down.
There is no BSOD or anything like that, it'll just crash.

The cursor at the side of "Shutting down" will stop spinning and even after leaving it for some time, there is still nothing so I have to turn it off manually.
The PC will then start up just fine as though nothing has happened.

I've done some tests on the hardware side and I've been running stress tests the past couple of days to see if a piece of hardware has started to fail but the results came back fine.
I can run Prime95 on full stress test for hours on end and still do my work without a problem in sight.
The HDD is coming back fine too after a full disk check.

It's a bit strange that it'll only crash while shutting down which has lead me to think it's a Windows issue then it is anything else. Although I've never come across this problem before.

There has been no new drivers which I've installed and except The Witcher 2 the other day (although the problem first came to light before it was installed) no new programs have been added to my system.
The system doesn't crash all the time, just whenever it feels like.

Thanks for your reply jhansen965

I've been looking at the error reports and performance logs and the machine hasn't picked up any of these crashes since they started.

There is an error from a new GPU driver a few months back and then some new drivers that were installed a few weeks ago but well before the problem started.
Apart from that it's like the crashes never happened, even when the PC resets there is no "Windows recovered from unexpected shutdown" message.

Thank you all for your replies

mgorman87, I tried the Hotfix you linked to me, however upon trying to install it failed. Could it be possible it was packed with SP1?

I've been looking through "Windows Update" and there was a new driver installed a day or so before the first crash. I can't remember selecting it but then again I may have checked everything when installing the monthly updates.

The driver was for the Realtek Network device (I also have an Intel one too) so I uninstalled it and then reinstalled the latest version which the ASUS website has given me.
I'm hoping this may have been the cause, I don't really feel like doing a clean install of Windows at the moment.

I'll give it a few days and post back

Hey Guys

It's been a couple of weeks now since I tried a fix for my random hard crashes during Shutdown.

Since going back to the old Realtek driver from the ASUS website I've had no crashes during Shutdown.

The update was provided by Windows Update, so I've now blocked it so it shouldn't install again.

Thank you all for your help on this issue, hopefully this will help other people with the same problem.