Shutdown problems

I had shutdown problems last week. I went to the HP Help site for my Compaq Presario CQ71 laptop and updated my BIOS. That did the trick but just for a few days as Shutting down just runs for hours without doing anything. When I find this, I shut down via the on/off button.

So it's not the BIOS and MBAM shows no viruses.

The only thing that I've seen is that I've been getting the message "the following programs are still open - force shutdown?" but there aren't any programs displayed.

I've searched here and found this Force Shutdown but that was inconclusive.

I'm going to check the event log but what should I look for? Is there any other possible cause/solution, please?

See if Shut Down -Speed Up helps

GokAy said:

See if Shut Down -Speed Up helps

Many thanks for this - I'll look into it and get back (though it may be a few days).

The problem actually got much worse - I followed advice to use msconfig and select 'Diagnostic start-up' and then add programs one at a time to see if I could find the culprit (if that's the cause). I selected diagnostic and hit Apply - the PC hung up and after five minutes I switched off the power button.

I restarted and got a strange (desktop) screen - all my icons were there but in the Bottom Left, instead of the MS flag Start icon it said Start in black font on a white background and the bottom task bar was white. I had no internet connection and my Action Centre said I'd lost my MS Security Centre. I then tried System Restore but had a message along the lines of "Error in Volume Shadow Copy Service 0 x 80042302 - unable to open System Restore".

Went on my back-up (XP desktop) but struggled.

Eventually remembered the 'Esc' button on power-up, hit 'System Recovery' then 'System Restore' and that worked. I chose a date before the recent Microsoft important update (KB2538243MS Visual C++ SP1).
It now wants me to install it but before I do I'm going to check if this Microsoft update has caused problems for anyone else. I won't start a new thread but will check asap. Thanks for your interest and support - much appreciated.

Use this one Troubleshoot Application Conflicts by Performing a Clean Startup, doesn't say to use Diagnostic anywhere

In case it helps anyone else, it wasn't the BIOS - HP's online update checker was giving me false reports. An HP adviser solved it by telling me to change the Power Plan from 'HP Recommended' to High Performance' and my laptop now switches off normally.

HP bloatware is the worst that I've ever seen. I usually uninstall everything from HP that I can.