Help! my new laptop takes forever to turn off!

tyu678 · 13 Oct 2011

Corazon said:

tyu678 said:

Corazon said:

Welcome tyu678!

Does your laptop say "Stopping services" or "Shutting down" when it's taking that long to actually power off?

(I have an idea, but want to hear your answer first)

Yes, It says 'shutting down' and shows little circle spinning around

from their it takes like 3 minutes to be turned off

AHA. OK, here's my idea. I might be completely off-track with this, or it could be the very reason for your long shutdown time.

There's a registry setting that allows you to clear the page file during shutdown, which incidentally takes a few minutes (and is normally pretty useless). It will keep doing this until you turn the setting off.

Run regedit.exe and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management, then look for a REG_DWORD entry called ClearPageFileAtShutdown.
Is this value set to 1? If yes, you have found the problem. Change it to 0 and exit the registry editor.

Gentlemen? I think my issue has been solved!

After setting the registry to 0, the shut down time came back to normal!

Thank you all for putting your precious time and efforts to fix my laptop :]
Again, Thank you and God bless you all :]

karlsnooks · 13 Oct 2011

Doubtful that this solved your problem. A reduction of shutdown time maybe but insignficant when one considers the time-frame you were reporting. Of course, by following the advice given by GregRocker then you would know what elements were contributing how much time to your total shutdown time.

Corazon · 13 Oct 2011

I have to admit now I'm actually surprised, if my idea was indeed the right one!

Glad to hear the problem is solved, though. Now I just wonder what would have enabled the clear-pagefile-at-shutdown setting to begin with - possibly some tweaking utility. Again, that's assuming my solution really was the one.

tyu678 · 14 Oct 2011

Karlsnooks, when I checked again by changing the value to 1, it certainly was the cause of this issue. :]

gregrocker · 14 Oct 2011

We have to start with the assumption that there is a reason Windows 7 wants the page file cleared at shutdown. Watch your performance carefully to make sure there is no effect. Check back to let us know. Others will find and be linked to this thread via Google.

Corazon · 14 Oct 2011

That's the thing though - something set the pagefile to clear itself on shutdown but it wasn't Windows, I'm sure of that. There's no reason to ever do this except to gain some heightened sense of security.
I know of no way that Windows would turn this setting on all by itself or any purpose for doing this - so it must have been some kind of tweaking utility.

gregrocker · 14 Oct 2011

Let's check the default setting on that key.

Edit: Two machines I've checked here have that key and it is set to 0, so something must have changed the setting. Did you use any tweaking or optimization suite?

Corazon · 14 Oct 2011

By default, that key doesn't exist.

tyu678 · 14 Oct 2011

gregrocker said:

We have to start with the assumption that there is a reason Windows 7 wants the page file cleared at shutdown. Watch your performance carefully to make sure there is no effect. Check back to let us know. Others will find and be linked to this thread via Google.

I will gladly do so :]

karlsnooks · 14 Oct 2011

iF by default the key doesn't exist, the first export the key to save and then delete the key.

Interesting will be to see if the key reappears. If yes, then so software that you have installed is altering the registry and setting the data value to 1.