Computer still shutting down three hours later...

writhziden · 27 Mar 2012

I was trying to save an ISO file from an old CD using ImgBurn so I would have a backup copy of it. The CD got through 585,234 KB of 595,225 KB and stopped running. I tried to exit the application, tried to end the process, end the task, etc. and it would not end. I finally decided to just shut down the computer in hopes that it would kill the task. Now my system has been shutting down for three hours. I do not like doing a hard shut down because it can damage hard disks and cause hard disk corruption. Any suggestions?

I am also curious: what is the longest other people have waited for their system to shut down before it accomplished the task? Anyone as patient as I am when it comes to avoiding hard shut downs?

alishathomaz · 28 Mar 2012

Wow...never heard of anything like that!
Maybe your computer ran the updates OR was trying to close a process/ program.

wanchoo · 28 Mar 2012

Earlier I had commented that ImgBurn is considered to be the best free Imaging Program but I have found it buggy and gooey.

The second best program is supposed to be Burnaware which has an excellent free version and an even better shareware version. Why don't you try the free version. It shall never give you a day's trouble in burning whatever you want. And its user interface is the best.

writhziden · 28 Mar 2012

Well, it turns out my fears were well founded. I did a hard shutdown, and now Windows gets stuck at the Windows Flag, Starting Windows with © Microsoft Corporation screen. I am going to run a disk check and see if I can revert to a restore point before this problem began. I just did a clean install yesterday...

wanchoo · 28 Mar 2012

If you carried out a clean install only yesterday then should forget about Restore Points and do another clean install. You wouldn't have installed many applications in one day to lose too much.

After your computer is up and running again, I suggest that you dump VLC for good and use the KMPlayer for media files and more particularly video files. You shall not regret it.

writhziden · 28 Mar 2012

I thought about doing that. I'm not sure if I want to go that route. I had just gotten all my research software installed and the paths set up properly through Environment Variables. The only software I had yet to install were MATLAB®, FORTRAN, and the editor I use for writing my code. I'll mull over doing a clean install again once I run the disk checks on my Windows and Data partitions.

gregrocker · 28 Mar 2012

You wanted to kill the ImgBurn process in Task Manager as it hung the shutdown.

Now I would run Startup Repair a few times from System Recovery Options.

writhziden · 28 Mar 2012

Thanks Greg, but as I stated in the first post, I was unable to kill the task through Task Manager. I tried Startup Repair, but had the same problem starting.

Question for you Greg: You have probably seen more of these issues on these forums than most, and certainly more than I have, so is there a better method to kill a task that is not responding?

I suspect in this case, I was focusing on the wrong task as it was actually TotalMounter that was likely causing the issues that showed up in ImgBurn. Not sure if it would have been easy to stop that problem since TotalMounter acts as hardware and its task would not affect that hardware; the only thing I can think of that I might have done differently is uninstalling its drivers or trying to uninstall TotalMounter itself. However, it would be nice to know how to kill a task that is unresponsive and will not shut down. Are the elevated command prompt command lines more aggressive to kill these tasks?

I believe it may have been an issue with my CD/DVD emulator software Kernsafe TotalMounter. I tried to install MATLAB through it, and it required a disc swap which I had not tried before. I changed the drive letters and made the mistake of opening TotalMounter before changing them back. I think the drivers for the software lost the correct path to the virtual hardware and prevented Windows from booting. I have not had any problems with TotalMounter over the months I have been running it, so I am fairly sure it was user error in this case.

I ran a system restore to before I installed TotalMounter, and I was able to get the system running again, but I had an unknown device in device manager related to a Kernsafe driver. At that point, I decided to cut my losses and do a clean install.

Oh, by the way, there was some file system corruption on my hard disks due to the hard shut down. That was cleaned up before I started the clean install. I am now going to take things one step at a time and create backup system images as I go to prevent these problems from occurring again. My plan is to go this route: Install device drivers, install all Windows updates, install my programs (minus any virtual hardware and MATLAB), create a system image, install my virtual CD/DVD drive software, install MATLAB and FORTRAN, and create another system image assuming it goes cleanly.

Let me know if this seems like a reasonable path or if there is anything to add or objections to make. My system is currently sitting shut down and turned off after the clean install.