Very slow shutdown

Hello folks.

I am currently having a problem with shutdown. It takes an average of 2-3 minuets for a shutdown to happen on my system (I would like to reiterate the minuets part...). I have gone through the regedit of tweaking waittokill to the min. value of 2000. I have also booted into safe mode (no drivers active) and done a shut down with the same results. This indicated to me that the issue resides within Windows itself. I check the event log and there is a 200 error which tells me that Windows is encountering soemthing that is hindering a shutdown. The log does not give me any information that I can decipher as a cause though. Still, I will post the info in hopes that someone else may be able to pull something from it:

Log name: Microsoft-Windows-Diagnostics-Performance/Operational
Source: Diagnostics-Performance
logged: 10/26/2009 4:49:59 PM
Event ID: 200
Task Category: Shutdown Performance Monitoring
Level: Error
Keywords: Event Log
User: LOCAL SERVICE
Computer: ##### (call me paranoid, but i don't want to give that out...)
OpCode: Shutdown Information

Details:
+ System - Provider [ Name] Microsoft-Windows-Diagnostics-Performance [ Guid] {CFC18EC0-96B1-4EBA-961B-622CAEE05B0A}
EventID 200 Version 1 Level 2 Task 4007 Opcode 40 Keywords 0x8000000000010000 - TimeCreated [ SystemTime] 2009-10-26T23:49:59.738200000Z
EventRecordID 392 - Correlation [ ActivityID] {02EED900-F800-0000-AC76-4CB69656CA01}
- Execution [ ProcessID] 1612 [ ThreadID] 1640
Channel Microsoft-Windows-Diagnostics-Performance/Operational Computer ###### - Security [ UserID] S-1-5-19

- EventData

ShutdownTsVersion 1

ShutdownStartTime 2009-10-26T23:44:18.968391800Z

ShutdownEndTime 2009-10-26T23:45:44.428550000Z

ShutdownTime 85460

ShutdownUserSessionTime 4311

ShutdownUserPolicyTime 1

ShutdownUserProfilesTime 350

ShutdownSystemSessionsTime 6748

ShutdownPreShutdownNotificationsTime 1516

ShutdownServicesTime 4998

ShutdownKernelTime 74400

ShutdownRootCauseStepImprovementBits 0

ShutdownRootCauseGradualImprovementBits 0

ShutdownRootCauseStepDegradationBits 0

ShutdownRootCauseGradualDegradationBits 0

ShutdownIsDegradation false

ShutdownTimeChange 0

My system is a custom build with a Quad-Core intel processor, 6GB RAM, 3/4TB HDD (500GB SATA & 250GB IDE). My system rates a 5.8 (the bottleneck is the HDD, every thing else is 6+). There should be no lag at any point in this systems operation, so to have it hang for over 2 minuets on shutdown is ridiculous.

Please help me with this problem. Thanks in advance!

What, if any, 3rd party antivirus or firewall apps have you installed?
Can you post a screenshot of the startup tab when you type msconfig in the start menu search box and hit enter?

Please try:

Make sure you are not clearing page file at shutdown, as this will cause alot of hdd thrashing and may take a long time to complete

Known bug : Do you have a Floppy Disk or even the Controler enabled in the Bios ?

If so boot to Bios and disable it and Windows will again be fast to shutdown.

Hello again. So Ussj4brolli's solution worked quite well. It figures Windows would automatically enable a feature that causes system slow down... Just out of curiosity, now that my page file clearing is disabled is there anything i should look out for (fragmentation, junk file build up, etc)? Also, since I have 6GB of RAM, should I just disable the page file? I have read that this feature is more or less useless after 4GB because RAM takes over and there is no need to store all of the temp data with this feature.

Thanks again for the help. Hopefully this will be the last system conflict with Win. 7 (although I am not optimistic about that).

T34 said:

Hello again. So Ussj4brolli's solution worked quite well. It figures Windows would automatically enable a feature that causes system slow down... Just out of curiosity, now that my page file clearing is disabled is there anything i should look out for (fragmentation, junk file build up, etc)? Also, since I have 6GB of RAM, should I just disable the page file? I have read that this feature is more or less useless after 4GB because RAM takes over and there is no need to store all of the temp data with this feature.

Thanks again for the help. Hopefully this will be the last system conflict with Win. 7 (although I am not optimistic about that).

Click to expand...

Good deal!! Glad i could help!!

Now, as far as a page file goes. This has been discussed ALOT. I ran with no page file when i got an SSD, (w/ 4gb ram) but even with 6gb or 8gb, Dawn of War 2 will not run withought one.

Also: with my system, i could not run Crysis Warhead without a pagefile, too. Got to the end of the loading screen for a savepoint, and it would die saying out of memory (1gb GDDR5 on card, and 4GB in system)

I now have a pagefile, 1gb, on a seperate HDD.

Best bet with a pagefile, look here: Change the size of virtual memory (Page file size) in Vista | Windows Reference
(same for windows 7)

Select custom size, and have the same size (whatever you wish, w/8gb id go even 700mb or 1gb) on initial and maximum, and it will not change sizes on you.

Admin: Solved

Some programs depends on the PageFile being present and this goes for Adobe CS4. Even though my system has 8gb RAM it still gives a warning of low memory. If you have a large HDD then I don't understand a reason for disabling it.

It should not be disabled for any reason, let Windows mange it as it has done very well since about XP.

USSJ4BROLLI,

Heartfelt thanks for your post! You are way better than MS Tech Support!

It started with me downloading a bunch of updates for W7 from MS. Up to then my laptop shut down fine (<30 secs) After that it started taking 4-5 minutes to shut down. I tried everything. Even bought Revo pro - nothing worked. MS Tech support is useless. Good old google! My error diagnostic was the same as T34's
Tried your fix and BINGO problem vanishes!

I am sick to death of MS blithely changing the config cos sometimes it gets it wrong! I have disabled auto update because Windows 7 insists on downloading new drivers even though they don't work!!. You get kinda sick of reloading the latest driver from the manufacturer to repair the damage done...

Thanks again for helping me out.

I would recommend letting Windows 7 take care of page filing and memory. IMHO the days of tweaking this things are gone. Windows 7 handles memory completely different. My understanding W7 knows when a SSD drive is installed and adjust. So you can take a look at what W7 is doing with your memory, Start and type resmon and go to memory. If you are still getting low memory warnings you need more memory for the programs you are using. If you change you memory settings you might get rid of the warnings but your computer will still go slower. I have not found a way in W7 system that needs more ram to make things work better other than installing more ram.