Solved Windows 7 64 Bit will not Shut Down

[bpatters69]

Hello All,

I am running Windows 7 64 bit and as of the past two shut downs, Windows 7 will not shut down. The PC just sits there with a "logging off" message. I have to hold the power key down for a few seconds to get the PC to turn off.

I did a search online and I found a Microsoft tip which told me to start up MSCONFIG and run a clean boot. I followed the tip and ran a clean boot and the PC shut down. The problem is all of my software did not load which included my McAfee firewall. I re-ran MSCONFIG and turned McAfee back on so that it loaded on the next boot and set the PC to do a normal install (McAfee & Microsoft apps load but nothing else). I restarted the machine and then I was able to sucessfully shut down my PC. So basically, I only have McAfee in as a startup program. All of the Microsoft programs are running as I hid those which the tip told me to do.

My question to the forum is do I care if the other (everything but McAfee) software is not starting up? My understanding is that if I need the software and I launch it won't all of the items that the software needs load into memory at that time? Any other guesses as to why my PC does not shut down? As you can tell, I am thinking that it is a software hang up from a bad app.

Thanks, Bill

 

[Golden]

Hi Bill,

Can you list the software that was in your startup items? We might be able to spot an obvious offender.

Regards,
Golden

 

[bpatters69]

Hi Bill,

Can you list the software that was in your startup items? We might be able to spot an obvious offender.

Regards,
Golden

Golden

Thanks for the response. Great idea. I am not at my PC but I will get it tonight and post it. I had to reinstall the OS so there are very few programs running at this point. I can tell you this, I have been looking for a decent back-up program and I had a program called Cobian and Acornis Back up installed. The timing of the shutdown failures was suspiciously close to when I installed the Cobian. I have read a lot of bad reviews on Acronis as well. If the PC hangs again on shutdown, I am going to completely uninstall Acronis. I have already uninstalled Cobian. I realize that it was probably not the best idea to have two similar utility programs running at the same time.

Like I said, I have very few programs running and I will post all of them later. I know Adobe Reader is running and maybe one or two other programs. I did buy a Hitachi External drive which came with back up software and I loaded that too. Sigh...sigh... hmmmmmm..... I have installed Microsoft Office 2003 as well but I did not see any references to Office in the program list. The references from office may have been removed when I hit "hide the microsoft apps".

I am thinking that I should uninstall Acronis as well. From a timing perspective, I started having trouble when Cobian and Acronis were both installed. Cobian is freeware so who knows what bugs it may have. No offense to the programmer but you cannot expect thorough testing with free programs.

Does Event Viewer show you what program that the PC gets hung up on?

 

[Golden]

Hi Bill,

Yes, Event Viewer might do that.

At any rate, you were correct that you do not need to have everything startup when Windows boots, since, as you say, you can simple execute the program as you need it.

A few more tips:

McAfee isn't exceptionally well regarded as an anti-virus suite, and it has been know to cause problems in the past. Have you considered an alternative? There are lots of good free ones available too, the most popular being:

Virus, Spyware & Malware Protection | Microsoft Security Essentials
avast! Free Antivirus - Download Software for Virus Protection (requires free annual registraion)

Can we assume Windows is fully updated? Hardware device drivers too? If not, it won't hurt to do so.

It might help too if we had an idea of what hardware you are using. Follow this tutorial to gather this information and add it to your forum profile. It might offer some more clues as to the problem.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/180324-system-info-see-your-system-specs.html

Acronis has a good name, as does Cobian from the few people I have spoken too about it (I believe the forum owner - zero10 - uses that/did use that to back up his forum database). However, its not beyond the bounds of possibility that it just doesn't "agree" with your system. Perhaps this might offer you an alternative backup option in the future:

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/187346-robocopy-create-backup-script.html

Post back here with more info when you can, and I'm pretty confident the team here will have you sorted out quite quickly.

Regards,
Golden

 

[bpatters69]

Thanks Golden. I will post system specs later as well - when I get home. In the mean time, I have updated my profile with what I know about my system. I did notice that my BIOS is old (2009) so I will update the BIOS. I do not think it can hurt.

Can we assume Windows is fully updated? Hardware device drivers too? If not, it won't hurt to do so.

Another good point. I loaded all of the drivers from the CD that came with the motherboard. I bought the mobo in February of 2007 so by technology standards, it is getting old. I will check each driver to make sure that I have the latest driver for each device. The mobo was designed to work with Vista and my understanding is that Vista is similar to Windows 7.

Can we assume Windows is fully updated? Hardware device drivers too? If not, it won't hurt to do so.

I would answer a tenative yes. I have updates turned on and so far all of the updates have been installed. The only one that did not install was MS Internet Explorer 9. I was able to get it to install by re-running the install from within the updates screen. My wife uses it, I use Mozilla. Is there a way to make sure that my OS is up to date other than checking the update status in the task bar?

Will post start up items and system info later. Thanks

 

[bpatters69]

Just got home. I checked the programs that loaded into MSCONFIG and McAfee is all I see. Everything else is now shut off. I also updated my system specs.

Thanks, Bill

 

[Golden]

Hi Bill,

Thanks for posting up your system specs.

I think the fundamental problem with your system is that you only have 1GB of RAM (and its very slow RAM too) - for Windows 7 32bit the minimum recommeded is 2GB, and you are running Windows 7 64 bit. Can I hazard a guess that your system is generally very sluggish?

Lets have a look at how Windows rates your system performance. Can you please follow these Steps:

1. Click rb:
2. In the search box, type Windows Experience
3. Select the option Check Windows Experience
4. In the panel that opens, please select Re-run the assesment, as shown below
5. When it is complete, take a screen capture of this panel and post it here in your next reply.



I think the best thing you could do is add more, and faster RAM to your system. It will make it snappier and perhaps avoid some of the shutdown issues you were having. Prices of RAM have dropped dramatically since 2007 so I think this could be the easiest and cheapest way to treat your system to a makeover.

Regarding the BIOS, before you update that, read up a bit on what the updates may deliver. We have seen many instances here where an incorrect flshing/update of the BIOS completely wrecks a system to the point of no recovery. Research it carefully, and be cautious.

Let us know if you need help selecting RAM if you don't feel confident with that, and we can do that for you.

Regards,
Golden

 

[bpatters69]

Golden

Thanks for the reply. I updated my system specs as I have 4GB vs 1Gb. I was cutting and pasting and I missed the 1GB. Oops. Never thought too much about the speed of the memory though. Memory is so cheap these days, might still make sense to switch it out. My PC runs fairly well though. I will check the experience. I ran it recently and I think it was 4.8 or 5.8. Supposedly the Asus mobo was one of the best at the time. If I had know that the RAM was a bottleneck, I would have chosen differently.

Understood on the BIOS. I did check and my BIOs is the 2nd or 3rd latest revision. I lost my main hard disk last month and so I reset the BIOS to the original. I think Asus told me to try that. I guess I did not do it properly as the BIOS is a more current version than what the board shipped with.

Since disabling Acronis from starting up and making sure that two Windows updates went through, the PC has been shutting down ok. So maybe the tinkering with the MSCONFIG did it or maybe making sure Windows update went through did it. Oh I did update a sound driver from some generic windows version to the Realtec one from Asus.

Maybe I am ok. I will check back in a couple of days.

 

[Golden]

I updated my system specs as I have 4GB vs 1Gb. I was cutting and pasting and I missed the 1GB. Oops.

Hehe. That makes a big difference.

Nevermind, your system seems OK now. Perhaps you could also try a disk defragmentation and see what that tells us too.

Regards,
Golden

 

[bpatters69]

Just checked my windows experience and it is 5.8. That sounds pretty good. The RAM is 5.8 and so is the processor. The Graphics card and hard disk are 5.9. I don't think fragmentation is a concern as this is a new Windows 7 install. It is about 2 or 3 weeks old at this point.

 

[Golden]

Hi Bill,

I agree - your peformamce scores are more than adequate.

You never did say what programs were in your startup (the ones you later removed) when you were first having the problems....can you recall what they were?

At any rate, it sounds as if the issues are gone and the situation is solved. Is that correct?

Regards,
Golden

 

[bpatters69]

Hey Golden

I did squeeze in what was running in my startup in one of my long posts above... . All that was there was McAfee and Acronis items. I unchecked all of the Acronis items so the only thing that loads are the Microsoft items.

This mobo has been decent but not great. Peroformance-wise it has taken everything that I could throw at it. I have had a bunch of issues with it. As I said, my main hard disk crashed last month so I had to reload everything. No big deal as it was all backed up. The problem is that this is the second hard disk that has crashed in two years. I have some theories but they are just that.. I am not really sure why it has happened. There are some odd symptoms such as the BIOS not recognizing any hard drives and then loading Windows 7 without any problems. Also, when I go into BIOS, the primary hard disk is never list as the first drive, it is listed as the 3rd drive. Just odd stuff. I may have a quirky controller. Who knows.

If I lose another HD, I am going to have to retire this mobo though. Enough is enough.

So to answer your other question, I am tentatively saying that it looks like I am good.

Thanks, Bill

 

[Golden]

Hi Bill,

Thats great. Seeing as your system is up and running now, you may want to consider imaging the entire HDD to an external USB drive. That way, if the HDD dies, or you do decide to retire the motherboard, you can simply transfer the image from the external drive back to the new HDD. Its much faster than reinstalling.

There are a few options out there to do this. I use FREE Macrium Reflect. Of course, there is also a very good tutorial here at SevenForums for helping with that too if you need it:

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/73828-imaging-free-macrium.html

Regards,
Golden