Strange Windows 7 shutdown times - VMware may be the cause

[whs]

My Windows 7 system normally shuts down in 5 seconds - but sometimes it takes 30 seconds to shut down. At first I was puzzled, but then I found the circumstances.

1. When I run a virtual system under VMware Player at any time between Windows 7 boot and shutdown, the Windows 7 shutdown is 30 seconds. Note that the virtual system may have already been shut down 2 hours earlier. And if I later look into Event Viewer > Event 200, the shutdown time is registered as 5 seconds.

2. If I never run a virtual system between boot and shutdown, then Windows 7 shuts down in 5 seconds.

I really wonder what the system is doing during the extra 25 seconds in case #1. Has anybody running virtual systems under VMware Player observed a similar shutdown behavior.

 

[Callender]

Possibly you can compare the length of time messages are shown on screen on shutdown if you create the following just for test purposes.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\policies\system]
"verbosestatus"=dword:00000001

Compare normal shutdown with shutdown after running VMware.

 

[whs]

They are 5 seconds in all cases.

 

[Callender]

They are 5 seconds in all cases.

I was hoping that it might provide a clue! It seems that this has been seen before:

virtual machine - How to debug intermittent slow VMware startup and shutdown times - Super User

 

[Callender]

Currently I don't have VMWare Player installed but found the following:

https://communities.vmware.com/thread/165207

So for Windows 7:

Maybe try backing up the config.ini file then editing it.

C:\ProgramData\VMware\VMware Workstation\config.ini

Then try adding this:

prefvmx.minVmMemPct = "100"
mainMem.useNamedFile = "FALSE"
mainMem.partialLazySave = "FALSE"
mainMem.partialLazyRestore = "FALSE"

 

[whs]

It is not the VMware shutdown. It is the shutdown of the Windows 7 host system 2 or 3 hours after VMware was long shut down.

 

[Golden]

I've never seen that behaviour with my 7 host. Is there anything in eventlog?

 

[whs]

Nothing unusual in the event logs. The event 200 says shutdown was 5 sec where in reality it was 30 sec.

 

[Callender]

VMWare issues?

Just installed Slacko Puppy in a VM - powered off the VM and shut down windows. Didn't notice any significant increase in shutdown time. I do have fast shutdown tweaks enabled though.

https://tweakhound.com/2013/08/26/fix-programs-prevent-windows-shutdown/

I did notice the following processes, services and drivers - mostly left running:

 

[whs]

Thanks Chris. That is very interesting. It is probably those left over processes that need to get shut down. Maybe I should see whether the fast shutdown tweaks would help.