Windows 7: Problems with 'Shut Down' taking too long

I'm not sure what was wrong, but it was taking a very long time for my laptop to shut itself down.
~10mins? ~15mins? Somewhere along the lines of that...definitely not the proper shut down sequence. I'm also not sure why this started happening...

Something seems to have caused a hang-up or some kind of error/problem with shutting down. Everything else seems to be working fine when the computer is turned on. It's just the shut down that seems to be having some issues.

So I was trying to read and troubleshoot this to see if I could figure out what was wrong. Here are some of the things I did:

• I booted into safemode and tried shutting down, and it still took quite a long time.
• I did a full scan with my antivirus program (Kaspersky Internet Security 2014) and it was clean.
• I did a full scan with Malwarebytes and it was clean.
• I ran the '' /sfc scannow " and it verified everything was okay.
• I did the 'error-checking' CHKDSK scan (after rebooting it scanned) and reported that everything seemed okay.
• Manually ran Windows Update to make sure my system was up-to-date. Everything is up-to-date.

After trying to find out/read other topics and suggestions with people experiencing the similar problems, I was wondering if there was something wrong with my system pagefile? So I followed some advice that was given and did this: Computer>System Properties>Advanced System Settings>Advanced Tab and went into the Performance Settings>Advanced Tab and under the Virtual Memory clicked 'Change'> I then selected 'No paging file' and applied that change. I rebooted my computer (still took too long for shutting down) and then after the reboot I went through the same steps above to create a new pagfile. I selected the system to automatically manage paging file size for all drives and changed the 'No paging file' to 'System managed size' and clicked 'Set'. Rebooted the computer and still seemed to take a long time...

So then I was reading something about possible problems with the system automatically clearing the pagefile at shutdown and it could be causing the extremely long shut down times? So I followed some advice opened up RegEdit to navigate around the registry.

• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management
• Changed the data value of the ClearPageFileAtShutdown value in the following registry key from a value of 1 to a value of 0.

After this I shut down my computer and it seemed to shut down "normally".

So my question(s) and concerns right now are...is this a fix and solution to my issues? So my pagefile isn't getting cleaned anymore, right? Will it ever be cleaned? Do I have to worry about problems (since it's not being cleaned) of it saving and collecting data and growing bigger? Is what I did safe and acceptable? Are there some other things I can do to try to resolve this another way? I guess I don't really understand this and which value is "the best, safest, and most appropriate" value to have. 0 or 1? Does it really matter using one over the other?

The other HP laptop here has its value set to 1 and it shuts down "normally". So I'm wondering why on this laptop the long shutdown time is happening?

Are there some tools/scans I could run and upload specific information here on the forums so someone with more expertise could look them over? Or possibly some error logs the computer stores that I could upload that someone could look over and try to identify the issues?

Sorry for the long post—it feels like I'm writing a novel! I'm just trying to explain some of the things I have done to try to figure out and fix this issues. But since I'm not extremely tech-savvy I'm coming here for help.

I know my way around a computer, but in no way am I real expert or extremely tech-savvy. So if there's anything I can do, I would appreciate some advice and guidance.

Thank!

Welcome to the Seven Forums.

I'm pretty sure that the ClearPageFileAtShutdown setting should be 0 by default. I would leave it as 0.

Perhaps there is an app that is running...
...that hangs on shutdown
...that Windows is not telling you about.

You can try the steps in this tutorial...
Troubleshoot Application Conflicts by Performing a Clean Startup
...to see if you can find that app.

Thanks for the reply.
It seems to be shutting down "normally" now...did I delete and recreate the pagefile correctly?

So 0 is the default setting? Hmm, it makes me wonder why it was listed as a 1 when I went into the registry.

I guess I'm just a little confused about these two pagefile values. If it's okay and safe to run it with a value of 0, then I will just leave everything alone since it seems to be shutting down normally.

Can someone explain the basics of the pagefile or differences between the two values (0 and 1)?

Also I really was hoping there was a recommended tool I could run and/or some logs on my laptop I could upload here and have someone look them over just to make sure there's no critical issues or errors going on. Is that possible?

Thanks in advance, I'm just a little worried and like I said earlier I'm not a computer expert, so some guidance and some more feedback would be appreciated.

Thanks again.

I checked a few other W7 computers and they all had ClearPageFileAtShutdown set to 0. Setting it to 1 would cause the shutdown process to take longer - while Windows writes over all of the info that was in the pagefile. There might be a reason to set it to 1, but I've only seen the tinfoil hat crowd do that.

It does sound like you (correctly?) recreated the page file. There are other (harder - maybe safer) ways to remove the current pagefile. Let's hope that you don't need to do it again.

Alright, I guess I'll just leave things the way there are with the value set to 0.

Thanks for the help as well as checking a few other computer's settings.

I'll try this and will let you know if it works.


steve barbarich