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WINDOWS XP
SHUTDOWN & RESTART
TROUBLESHOOTING
“With its rock-solid
foundation and ground-breaking new features, Windows XP Professional
won’t quit working,
even when your workday is done.” — Microsoft
(Did they know what they were saying?)
Shutdown problems in Windows XP can be caused by many
factors, just like earlier versions of Windows. These included: a damaged
exit sound file; incorrectly configured, damaged, or incompatible hardware;
conflicting programs, or an incompatible, damaged, or conflicting device
driver.
For a step-by-step troubleshooting method that applies
to all versions of Windows 9x, see the generic Windows Shutdown Troubleshooter.
Some of its steps may be found to apply to Windows XP as well, though
many will not.
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Windows XP shutdown issues mostly center around
a very few issues, especially legacy hardware and software
compatibility issues.
Currently, the leading cause of Windows XP shutdown problems is hardware
incompatibility, including driver issues. These are detailed below
where known. However, it is impossible to list every possible hardware
or driver issue individually. My best advice is: Check all drivers
for all hardware devices to ensure that they are the current best
for Windows XP.
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REBOOT INSTEAD OF SHUTDOWN
Most Win XP shutdown problems reported thus far have
been that it reboots when shutdown is attempted. This
may be a global symptom emerging from several distinct causes, because,
by default, XP executes an automatic restart in the event of
a system failure. Therefore, more or less anything compromising
the operating system during the shutdown process could force this reboot.
Disabling the “restart on system
failure” feature may permit the exact cause to be isolated:
Right-click on My Computer, click Properties, click the Advanced tab.
Under “Startup & Recovery,” click Settings. Under “System Failure,”
uncheck the box in front of “Automatically restart.”
Here are some things that have produced this reboot-instead-of-shutdown
symptom:
- By now, the Roxio/Adeptec Easy CD /
Direct CD software is well documented as being the
major cause of this undesirable shutdown behavior. SOLUTION:
Roxio has released new drivers (here)
to solve this problem in both the Platinum and Basic editions of Easy
CD Creator 5. As expected, at least half of the Win XP shutdown problems
went away with the release of these patches.
One warning about this patch comes from
correspondent Bert Smith: Be sure to read the directions! “Roxio Easy
CD Creator Platinum 5.0 can be a real hassle to get working under Win
XP,” Bert wrote, “and there is the risk of your computer not booting
if you blindly go ahead and install it without first consulting the
Roxio Web site.” Bert also mentioned that Roxio’s “Take Two” backup
program (normally part of Easy CD Creator 5 Platinum) is uninstalled
when the Roxio patch is applied.
- Direct CD. Many Easy CD users
(but not all) found that installing Easy CD 5.0 does not cause the
shutdown problem, provided they do not install the
Direct CD component.
- UDFRINST. Several people solved
this reboot-on-shutdown problem by deleting the UDFRINST
file. This file is part of the Roxio CD-RW software for systems not
using Direct CD.
- CDRALW2K.SYS. Correspondent Larry
Blumette identified the CDRALW2K.SYS file
(version 1.0.0.1048) as the Roxio file causing his shutdown problems
and error conditions. When he deleted or renamed this one file, his
problems went away. (Of course, you lose your CD functionality that
way, too.)
- Video Pack 5. Roxio’s Video Pack
5 causes the same problem because it contains includes the main parts
of Easy CD 5. SOLUTION: Uninstall Video Pack 5 and
also delete CDRALW2K.SYS (Tip from Christian Männchen). However,
this solution may also have the side-effect of disabling access to
your CD or DVD drive. SOLUTION TO THE SIDE-EFFECT:
Apply one of the repair methods in MSKB Article 270008, Code 31 Messages
Occur After Removing Adaptec Easy CD Creator 4.02c in Windows 2000
(Tip from Peter Kingsley).
- Whether or not APM is enabled makes
a difference — but the effect could go two ways. Some users report
that XP reboots on shutdown if APM is enabled, but shuts Windows down
just fine if APM is disabled. Other users report exactly the opposite
behavior. According to Jack Dunne, this is similar to a known Windows
2000 problem. The issue seems related to the computer’s specific hardware
or BIOS — so, as with all NT operating systems, stick to the Hardware
Compatibility List where possible.
- USB Connections As can be seen from
remarks in the Misc. Hardware Issues section
below, several different USB-related issues can impact shutdown. One
of the most concrete examples was a “reboot on shutdown” problem contributed
by correspondent Rick Bross. If his several USB devices (PDA cradle,
flash card reader, etc) were plugged into the motherboard’s USB ports,
his computer would reboot on an attempted shutdown; but when, instead,
he plugged them into an external USB 2.0 hub, shutdown went just fine.
(This was with Win XP Professional SP1 on a Supermicro X5DAE dual Xeon
motherboard. The same devices plugged into an Asus A7M-266D dual AMD
2000MP system on the same OS worked without problem.)
- “Wake on” power settings Power-management
settings that have the computer “wake” on LAN, USB, modem, or (for
that matter) probably anything else may also trigger a restart after
shutdown. Correspondent Simon Wei provided this tip after a friend
of his found an old old Logitech USB mouse would trigger “wake on USB”
after every Windows shutdown. Their solution was to remove that particular
mouse and all worked fine. The principle is much more far-reaching
than this one example.
- Hidden “wake on” power settings
If you have an Ethernet card integrated into your motherboard, you
may have hidden “wake on” settings that are harder
to find. Site visitor Jim Porter found that his Asus P5GDC-V Deluxe
motherboard had a “wake on” setting in Device Manager | Properties | Advanced rather than in the
BIOS or Power Management settings. (The Asus P5AD2 and P5GD2 boards
have this also.)
- Y-SB3 Logitech Internet Keyboard
can also cause this problem. If you use it as a simple generic keyboard,
there’s no problem; but, if you install the Key Commander software
that drives the special Internet functions, Win XP will restart instead
of shut down. Unfortunately, Logitech has decided that they will not
be updating this driver for this keyboard. (Tip from Jan K. Haak.)
- Logitech MouseWare 8.6. Windows
reboots when shutdown is attempted. The software caused a BSOD with
KBDCLASS.SYS. Removing the software solved the BSOD the problem. (Tip
from Pablo Cheng.) MouseWare 9.0 and 9.1 also
have been linked to reboot-instead-of-shutdown in Win XP. Removing
the software resolves the problem. (Tip from Aswin Kindts, Greg
Williams, and others)
- Webstar DPX USB cable modem. In
the one case known to me, the problem was solved by switching the modem’s
connector from the USB 1.1 port on the motherboard to the USB 2.0 PCI
card. (The modem was provided by Telewest Broadband, manufactured by
Scientific Atlanta.) (Tip from Ann L. Goonan.)
SHUTDOWN HANGS ON “SAVING YOUR SETTINGS”
During shutdown or reboot, Win XP may hang (stop responding)
at the “saving your settings” screen. During such a hang, there is no
response to Ctrl+Alt+Del; the mouse may or may not work. The problem
may be intermittent.
This is a known bug in Windows XP, for which Microsoft
has a supported fix. To learn how to get this patch, see MSKB 307274,
“Windows XP Stops Responding (Hangs) During Windows Shutdown.” The necessary
patch is included in Windows XP Service Pack 1, and also is now available
on the Windows
Update site under “Recommended Updates” for Win XP Professional,
titled “Restarting Windows XP.” However, to find it, you may need to
reconfigure how Windows Update appears for you, by enabling the Windows
Update Catalog as follows: At the Windows Update page, click Personalize
Windows Update at the left, and then Enable the Windows Update
Catalog. Save your settings. This adds the Windows Update Catalog
link in the left box. Click this link, then click Find updates for
Microsoft Windows systems. Pick Windows XP in the drop-down list,
click Search, take Recommended Updates, and find the “Restarting
Windows XP” patch which references Q307274.
As a workaround, newsgroup correspondent “lou” resolved
this problem by dismantling the Windows XP logon Welcome screen. In
the Control Panel, click User Accounts, then click “Change the way users
log on or off.” Uncheck the box that says “Use the Welcome screen.”
This removes the initial logon screen with individual icons for each
user and, instead, pops up the classic logon prompt that requires each
user to type a user name and password.
SBLive: DEVLDR32.EXE PROBLEMS
In the early days of Win ME, one of the biggest culprits
for shutdown issue was the Creative Labs SoundBlaster Live. History
repeated itself in the Beta phase of Win XP. SOLUTION:
The SBLive drivers in the released version of Win XP solved the shutdown
problem for most (but not all) SBLive users.
Here’s the commonly reported problem scenario
people encountered: On attempting shutdown, nothing at all
appears to happen for a prolonged period of time. Eventually, an “End
Task” window appears, wanting to terminate DEVLDR32.EXE. No matter
what one does, one ultimately is locked out of shutting down other
than by a power switch shutoff. (NOTE: This problem exists with the
SBLive in Windows 2000 also.)
You may have to do a couple of extra steps to get rid
of old files so that the new drivers will install correctly (especially
if you installed the final version of Win XP on top of one of the Beta
versions), or to remove troublesome support software. Correspondent
Sean Caldwell summarized his steps: Shutdown Windows. Remove the Creative
card. Reboot in Safe Mode. In the \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32 folder, delete the
DEVLDR file. Fully shutdown the computer before rebooting.
Some users report that the DEVLDR problem continues
to plague them even with the new drivers. If installing the
new drivers doesn’t solve your shutdown problem, try these solutions:
- Correspondent Martin Sladek wrote: “I’ve run into
the very same problem with SBLive Value drivers. The problem was so
severe I ran without the software all together. Since then, SBLive
5.1 came out, and I had installed the 5.1 version of the software in
Windows 2000 Pro. I’ve not had a single problem since.”
- But updating your drivers in Win XP may not be as
easy as one would hope. Some problems especially appear where multiple
users are enabled on the system and one switches between users during
a single Windows session. There may be numerous files with the same
name (but different version numbers!) variously located in the I386,
SYSTEM32, and SYSTEM32\REINSTALLBACKUPS\0000 folders. These may conflict
with each other. If you rename DEVLDR32 (ver 1.0.0.22) in SYSTEM32,
another one will replace it. (First, you need to press Ctrl+Alt+Del
and end DEVLDR in Task Manager). But if you use DEVLDR32 (ver 1.0.0.17)
from the I386 folder, this problem doesn’t occur. Reboot when finished
to reinaugurate the disabled service. (Tip from Terence Shortt,
aka tbone8200 on dellTalk.)
MISC. HARDWARE ISSUES
In addition to hardware issues mentioned under other
specialized topics on this page, many users have written identifying
specific hardware as at the root of the Windows XP shutdown issue. Here’s
what they have reported:
- CD-ROM DRIVE: Samsung 24x. Correspondent
Y. Leroux has identified the culprit in his shutdown problem, but doesn’t
yet have a permanent solution. If his Samsung CD-ROM drive is empty,
Win XP hangs on shutdown. To work around the problem, he either leaves
a CD-ROM in the drive, or leaves the drive door open. He wanted to
share this tip with others (thanks, Y.). Does anyone have a permanent
solution for this one?
- DVD-RW DRIVE: Pioneer DVR-106 or DVR-108.
Correspondent L. Frankenberg traced his shutdown problem to this hardware.
Correspondent Bob Berberick found the same for the DVR-108, and reported
that a firmware update for the DVR-108 now available from Pioneer resolved
his problem. It would probably be worth trying the firmware update
for the DVR-106 as well, though I have no reports from anyone as to
whether this solves the shutdown problem.
- MODEMS: Intel Ambient HaM Modem.
Causes Win XP to hang at shutdown. Previously, this was only resolved
by disabling the modem. SOLUTION: Intel subsequently
issued updated drivers that resolve this issue. They can be downloaded
here. (Tip from Mark Gillespie.) However, a new problem
with the Ambient Ham was introduced in Windows XP SP1, detailed below.
NOTE: The same problem
has been reported for the Creatix V.90 Ham PCI Modem.
Correspondent Gert Verheyen wrote that Creatix has an updated driver
and, more importantly, detailed instructions about manual removal
of the old one and installation of the new one. Go to the Creatix support page and click on V.90 HAM (internal)
at right. The removal of the old driver first seems to have been
the critical detail.
- MODEMS: Billion BIPAC PCI Passive ISDN-card.
Reboot instead of shutdown issue conjoined with BSOD error message
STOP 0x000000D1: DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL in file SERIAL.SYS.
Previously, this was only resolved by disabling the Billion ISDN card.
SOLUTION: Billion has now released a new driver 3.24
that solves this problem, available . (Tip from Leo Foederer.)
- MOTHERBOARDS: Asus P2B-F, P2B-VM, or
P2L97. Causes a shutdown problem because Win XP Setup doesn’t
enable ACPI by default. SOLUTION: Manually enable
ACPI during a Win XP install or reinstall. Correspondent Bill Anderson
(based on a solution by “Willy”) gave a lengthy description of how
to do this, edited a little for space reasons. (Thanks also to
correspondents Ward from Belgium & Tony Gray.)
- Boot the computer from the Win XP CD-ROM.
- Win XP Setup says it’s checking hardware. Soon
after, at the bottom of the screen, it offers the opportunity to
press F5. (If offered the chance to press F6, press F5 instead! –
Tip from Mick Stone) Do this at once, and cross your fingers!
[Various users report difficulty with this. Apparently, sometimes
it works; sometimes not. It may be in the timing of exactly when
you press the key. You may have to try repeatedly, or try pressing
F5 and F6 repeatedly. – JAE] When successful, you’ll see a two-paragraph
instruction that begins, “To specify additional SCSI or other mass
storage devices.” Press <ENTER> to brings up a small window
that appears to contain only two options, but, in fact,
contains more (use the arrow keys to scroll up). If this windows
doesn’t appear at this point, you need to start over and do more
pressing of F5!
- When the small window does appear, use the up-arrow
to choose “Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI).” (It’s
the third from the top of the list.)
- Next, you may see that two-paragraph SCSI/mass
storage instruction again. If so, press <ENTER>. Many drivers
will load, then you should see the Win XP installation screen. If
you are running this after Win XP is already installed, choose the
Repair option.
- MOUSE: Logitech. If you have a Logitech
mouse, and an outdated version of the MouseWare software installed,
you may receive the following error message on a blue screen at shutdown:
STOP 0x000000D1, (0x0000002b, 0x00000002, 0x00000000,
0xEEEE1b01) IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL Kbdclass.sys. SOLUTION:
Update the Logitech MouseWare software. (Reference & more information:
MSKB 810980.)
- VIDEO CARDS: Hercules 3D Prophet 4500
and all other video cards based on the Kyro II video
chip. Causes restart and shutdown issues (or, in some cases, only restart
issues) until the video adapter is removed. SOLUTION:
New XP-specific drivers are now available from Hercules. At present,
they remain uncertified (PowerVR, who makes the Kyro II chip, is working
on that), but they reportedly work just fine. Download the Kyro II
drivers . (Tip from MS-MVP Don Lebow.)
- USB Devices. If you have one or
more USB devices attached to your computer, you may receive the following
error message on a blue screen at shutdown: Stop
0x000000D1 (0x00000040, 0x00000002, 0x00000000, 0xfc96a9dc).
SOLUTION: Upgrade to the latest Win XP service pack.
(Reference & more information: MSKB 317326.)
- USB: Keyboard or Mouse + Selective Suspend.
Some USB input devices (such as a USB keyboard or mouse) do not support
the Selective Suspend power management feature. When these devices
are used with Selective Suspend turned on, the computer may hang during
shutdown, or otherwise not shutdown correctly. WORK-AROUND:
Disable power management for your USB hub: Open Device Manager (click
Start, click Run, type DEVMGMT.MSC, click OK). Double-click to expand
Universal Serial Bus Controllers. Double-click USB Root Hub. Click
Power Management. Uncheck the box “Allow the computer to turn off this
device to save power.” OK your way out. NOTE: Doing this may significantly reduce laptop battery
life. (Reference & more information: MSKB 315664.)
- USB: Lexar Media Combo Digital Film Reader
(USB). There is a problem with the SAUSB.SYS file, apparently
part of the Win98 SE driver set for this device, retained during an
upgrade to Win XP. Deleting the file solved the problem. The newer
version 4.3 SAUSB.SYS driver from Lexar’s Web site works perfectly,
and does not cause a shutdown problem. (Tip from correspondent
Eric Brown.) Though one correspondent reported that the even newer
version 4.5 driver (SAUSBI.SYS) also can be used in Win XP , Lexar
says this driver doesn’t work on XP. One correspondent has confirmed
that this matches his experience in trying (unsuccessfully) to use
4.5 on both Widows 2000 and XP.
“STOP” ERROR MESSAGES AT SHUTDOWN
Some users, when attempting either to shutdown or restart
Win XP, get an error message similar to the following: STOP
0x0000009F: DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE
Stop Messages literally means that Windows has stopped.
(Which isn’t the same as saying it has shutdown!) See Knowledge Base Links: STOP MESSAGES for much more information
that the brief remarks below. Most Stop Messages indicate hardware issues;
some are caused by troublesome software or a system service problem.
The links page just mentioned provides a 10-step approach to troubleshooting
STOP Messages in general, then itemized analysis on the most common
of these. (STOP messages are identified by an 8-digit hexadecimal number,
but also commonly written in a shorthand notation; e.g., a STOP 0x0000000A
may also be written Stop 0xA.)
Here are a few that may affect Win XP shutdown and
restart. Stop 0x9F and Stop 0x8E are two
of the most common of these at shutdown, and generally point to a bad
driver. Stop 0x7B on restarting means Win
XP lost access to the system partition or boot volume during the startup
process, due to a bad device driver, boot sector virus, resource conflict,
boot volume corruption, or other problem listed here. Stop 0xC000021A can when on
restart after a system administrator has modified permissions so that
the SYSTEM account no longer has adequate permissions to access system
files and folders.
MS-MVP Jim Pickering advises the following as one approach
to these problems: Restart the computer. Press F8 during the restart
and select “ Last Known Good Configuration.” If you catch the problem
when it first occurs (meaning you likely have installed only one or
two drivers or new service), this will return you to a previous working
condition. System Restore provides an alternate approach, especially
if you need to go back further than the last known good configuration,
and Device Manager provides a tool for rolling back to an earlier driver.
SHUTDOWN WORKS, BUT IT’S REAL SLOW
- If it appears that Win XP is not shutting down, give
it some time. Some users report a minute or longer for shutdown to
visibly start. Generally, this is a consequence of software that is
running when shutdown is attempted. It also may have something to do
with particular hardware. If you experience this problem, be sure to
close all running programs before attempting shutdown and see if this
solves your problem. If so, then you can determine, by trial and error,
which program(s) are involved.
- Newsgroup correspondent “Sarah” provided one specific
solution for this. In Control Panel | Administrative Tools
| Services, stop the Nvidia Driver Helper service. (You can
also get this by launching SERVICES.MSC from a Run box.) Many other newsgroup participants
quickly confirmed that this solved this “extremely slow shutdown” problem
for them (it’s the most successful solution for this problem to date).
According to correspondent Gan Ming Teik, downloading and installing
the new version 23.11 Nvidia driver also solves this problem.
- Correspondent Ron Spruell found that disabling the
Terminal Services service reduced his shutdown time from over 2 minutes
(hanging at the “Windows is shutting down” screen) to about 10 seconds.
To disable Terminal Services, follow the steps in the prior paragraph
for launching SERVICES.MSC. Please note that Terminal Services is required
in Windows XP for running Remote Assistance, Fast User Switching, and
(in XP Pro) Remote Desktop.
- Correspondent Graeme J.W. Smith reported a more obscure
cause of slow shutdown: In Win XP Professional, the Group Policy Editor
has a security option to clear the pagefile at system shutdown. The
same setting also forces the hibernation file to be wiped at shutdown.
These processes take long enough that users may think that shutdown
has hung. To change the setting, click Start | Run,
type GPEDIT.MSC, click OK. Drill down to
Computer Configuration | Windows Settings | Security Settings
| Local Policies | Security Options. In the right pane, find
“Shutdown: Clear virtual memory pagefile.” NOTE: Since
someone actually has to have set this policy, the problem will be pretty
rare, but is worth mentioning. However, Forum participant “roadrunner”
reported that the personal security app Privacy Eraser
automatically enables “Clear virtual memory pagefile,” and, therefore,
may be the cause of a slow shutdown.
- The Gear Software Security Service (GEARSEC.EXE),
which enables iTunes for Windows to read and burn
CDs, has been reported by many users to cause Windows XP to hang at
the “Windows is shutting down” screen for as long as 20-30 seconds.
WORK-AROUND: Stop the service prior to shutdown. One
way to to this (suggested by “Thornburgh”) is to create a batch file
with the one line net stop gearsecurity.
You can either launch this batch file manually, or (in Win XP Professional)
use GPEDIT.MSC) to specify this batch file
as the shutdown script (under Computer Configuration | Windows
Settings | Scripts | Shutdown). Gear Software’s forum has
a thread on this issue here. (Tip from correspondent “Andy”)
- MS-MVP Gary Thorn discovered that the Event Log can
slow down Win XP shutdown. Disabling event logging removed the slowdown.
If this works for you, then the real troubleshooting
begins: finding out, by trial and error, what item that is being logged
is causing the actual slowdown. (In Gary’s case, the Telephony service
was causing the problem.) To disable the Event Log, launch the Services
console as detailed in No. 2 above, and disable Event Log (right-click
on Event Log, click Properties, under Startup Type select “Disabled”).
POWERDOWN ISSUES
“Powerdown issues” are quite distinctive from “shutdown
issues.” I define a shutdown problem as one wherein Windows doesn’t
make it at least to the “OK to shut off your computer” screen. If Windows
gets that far, or farther, then it has shut down correctly. However,
the computer may not powerdown correctly after that.
This is a different problem, and I encourage people reporting these
issues to make a clear distinction in their labeling.
When Windows XP won’t powerdown automatically, the
APM/NT Legacy Power Node may not be enabled. To enable this, right-click
on the My Computer icon, click Properties | Hardware | Device
Manager | View. Check the box labeled “Show Hidden Devices.”
If it’s available on your computer, there will be a red X
on the APM/NT Legacy Node. Try enabling it and see if this resolves
the powerdown problem (Tip from Terri Stratton). Or, to check
the other side of the APM/ACPI coin, open the Power Options
applet in Control Panel. If there is an APM tab, make sure the “Enable
Advanced Power Management Support” box is checked. (MSKB 313290)
This should resolve the powerdown issue in most cases.
However, other factors can sometimes interfere with correct powerdown
functioning. In that case, consider the following tips:
- Try some of the solutions on my Shutdown & Restart
Shortcuts page. If you really have a hardware inability to powerdown,
these won’t solve it; but for some other underlying causes of powerdown
failures, they just might.
- If you change the default power settings in the BIOS,
it can lead to a powerdown problem. Restoring all BIOS power settings
to default will likely fix it. (Tip from Kelly Theriot)
- Sometimes, not all appropriate Registry settings
are made when you enable all the right power management settings in
Windows. You can force the critical Registry setting with the “ShutNTdown” Registry patch.
Please follow sensible Registry editing protocol.
Backup your Registry before the change (or run System Restore to create
a restore point). After installing it, test Windows shutdown. If the
fix doesn’t work for you, remove it by restoring the Registry to its
prior state. (For those who want more background information, the fix
provided by this patch is based on information contained in MS Knowledge
Base article 155117 for Windows NT 4.0.)
- On some hardware, power management features simply
don’t work right. This is exceedingly rare on Windows XP when compared
to any earlier version of Windows but, on some machines, especially
if no BIOS upgrade is available, there seems no conclusion to reach
except, “Yes, you’re right, it doesn’t work, so don’t use that feature.”
Accordingly, several correspondents have noted that their Win XP computers
will not powerdown correctly unless they have Turn Off Monitor, Turn
Off Hard Disks, and System Standby all set to “Never” in Control
Panel | Power Options. (Tip from Dan Mitchell & others)
- How old is your power supply? Correspondent Andrew
Walsh had a computer that wouldn’t power down after a Win XP shutdown
until he replaced the power supply that was a few years old. Presto!
His problem was gone.
- Correspondent “Snake” restored powerdown functioning
by disabling his CD-ROM’s AutoRun feature. The fastest way to do this
is with the “Disable AutoRun” Registry patch that you can download
here.
- If you have Office XP installed,
the culprit may be CTFMON.EXE. This module provides the Alternate Language
Bar and provides text input service support for speech recognition,
handwriting recognition, keyboard, translation, and other alternative
user input technologies. When you close all Office programs, this module
stays active. Removing it can cause serious problems with your Office
XP products, but you can effectively disable it by setting the installation
state to Not Available in Office XP Setup. This isn’t
as easy as it sounds though — several steps are involved. For full
instructions, plus more information on the file and its function, see
What Is CTFMON and What Does It Do? (Tip from Jay Jones)
- VIA Apollo Pro 133 motherboards have a “USB
Keyboard support” BIOS setting that can interfere with proper power
management function if it is enabled — especially with respect to preventing
powerdown during attempted shutdown, and also preventing the computer
from waking from Stand-by. SOLUTION: Disable it. This was originally
reported on the Chaintech 6ATA2, and confirmed on other VIA Apollo
Pro 133 boards. (Tips from “Zef,” The Netherlands, & Robert
Lin)
- Toshiba laptop (model not specified). Problems
of Windows XP not powering off nor going into standyby were solved
by uninstalling (then reinstalling) the Toshiba Power Saver software
and Toshiba Hotkey for Display Devices. After doing this and a reboot,
the problem was gone. (Tip from David Flitterman)
NEW PROBLEMS INTRODUCED BY SERVICE PACK 1 (SP1)
Some new shutdown and powerdown issues have arisen
in Windows XP SP1. Here are the ones I know about:
- HIBERNATION/STANDY PROBLEM WITH
NERO SOFTWARE. If you have Nero CD-burning software (versions
5.0-5.5) installed on your computer, and invoke Standby or Hibernation
modes more than once in a Windows session, the computer will hang on
the “Preparing to...” screen and not go into Standby or Hibernation.
SOLUTION: Uninstall Nero completely, and keep your
eyes open for a new version of the program down the road. (Reference:
MSKB 331506.)
- WITH SP1, DON’T REMOVE SCSI ADAPTER
WHILE IN STANDBY. Service Pack 1 for Windows XP introduced
a new (but pleasingly rare) shutdown problem: If you remove certain
kinds of SCSI adapter while the computer is in Standby, the computer
may not shut down properly. There is a “hot fix” for this available
from Microsoft. (Reference: MSKB 330172.)
- SP1 + AMBIENT HAM MODEM + POSSIBLE
IRQ ISSUE. Site visitor Mike Redman wrote that, after installing
SP1, his computer would hang on the shutdown screen. Neither the mouse
nor Ctrl+Alt+Del would respond. Either uninstalling
SP1 or removing his Intel Ambient Ham 50.sys (unsigned driver) internal
modem would solve the problem. FINAL SOLUTION: Moving
the modem from PCI slot 4 to slot 5 and reinstalling the drivers. He
wrote, ”This may be an IRQ problem which SP1 was supposed to fix.”
NEW PROBLEMS INTRODUCED BY SERVICE PACK 2 (SP2)
Some new issues have arisen in Windows XP SP2. Here
are the ones I know about:
- AUTOMATIC WINDOWS UPDATE INSTALLATION.
Windows XP SP2 checks at shutdown for any Windows Updates have been
downloaded and not installed, then offers to install them as part of
the shutdown process. Understandably, this can cause a very slow shutdown
on that one occassion and, if something goes wrong, can even hang shutdown
completely. To see if your shutdown problem is caused by this issue,
look for error 0x80248011 in any of the Windows Update log files, particularly
%windir%\SoftwareDistribution\ReportingEvents.log. If present,
this indicates a corrupt local metadata store for Windows Update. SOLUTION:
Click Start, click Run, type SERVICES.MSC, click OK. Stop the Automatic Updates service.
Rename the c:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution
folder to c:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution.old.
Restart the Automatic Updates service. (Tip from MS-MVP Bill Castner.)
- REBOOT ON SHUTDOWN WITH HARDWARE-ENFORCE
DATA EXECUTION PREVENTION. If your computer uses hardware-enforced
DEP, as the 64-bit AMD processors do, and you installed hardware that
requires the MPEGPORT.SYS driver, there is a conflict. At shutdown,
the driver tries to run from the same memory space DEP monitors. A
0xFC Stop message occurs. If your computer is set to automatically
reboot on a system failure, it will simply reboot instead. The solution
is a new driver. Microsoft provides a work-around in MSKB
878474.
OTHER KNOWN ISSUES & HINTS...
- BIOS UPGRADE. As with
every new operating system that comes along — especially one that is
as much of a “step up” as Windows XP is from Windows 9x —
the recommendation is made to be sure your BIOS is updated. Many people
have reported that this has solved their shutdown problems (and had
other advantages) with Win XP, just as it has in earlier versions of
Windows.
- “ShutNTdown” REGISTRY PATCH.
Download the “ShutNTdown” Registry patch
mentioned above under powerdown
issues. Please follow sensible Registry editing protocol.
Backup your Registry before the change (e.g, run System Restore
to create a restore point). After installing, test Windows shutdown.
If the fix doesn’t work for you, remove it by restoring the Registry
to its prior state. This is not the appropriate shutdown fix for most
machines, but does help some users with Windows shutdown problems,
and not just with powerdown issues as one might suspect.
- UNSIGNED DEVICE DRIVERS.
Some users have found that Windows XP won’t shutdown properly if unsigned
device drivers are used. This is simply a variation of the broader
device driver issue: Hardware manufactures have not yet released all
necessary device drivers for Win XP. This will continue to be a problem
for the next few months; it already has been reduced to a very minor
cause of Win XP shutdown problems.
- SIGNED DEVICE DRIVERS ON TOP OF
UNSIGNED ONES. Good advice on a variation of the above comes
from correspondent Attila Szabadkai. For his SBLive 1024 sound card
he had originally installed non-XP drivers, then updated these with
digitally signed XP drivers downloaded from Creative Labs. Result:
He got a 0x0A Stop Message at shutdown.
SOLUTION: He removed all drivers, and put back only
the digitally signed one.
- PROGRAMS HANG / BECOME UNRESPONSIVE.
Sometimes programs don’t close down correctly, or hang for some other
reason during the Windows shutdown process. This freezes up, or at
least significantly delays, Windows shutdown. For example, a few people
have reported an error message that EXPLORER.EXE has become unresponsive
during shutdown when they have used Win XP’s native CD-burning capabilities
during that Windows session. If Windows is hanging because it can’t
force a program to terminate, one solution is to disable the automatic
end task logic (AutoEndTask). Use this registry patch to force
that setting change. (Be sure to back up the Registry first.)
- PACE INTERLOK ANTI-PIRACY SOFTWARE.
According to the MS Knowledge Base article Computer Hangs
During Shutdown Because of Resource Conflict, PACE InterLok anti-piracy
software installs a driver (TPKD.SYS) that uses the same IRQ as the
Standard Floppy Disk Controller device. This can cause Win XP to hang
at a blank screen (with mouse and keyboard nonresponsive) when you
try to shutdown or restart. Additional symptoms may be that the floppy
drive doesn’t show in My Computer; the Standard Floppy Disk Controller
device in Device Manager may display the error status “This device
cannot find enough free resources that it can use. (Code 12)”; and/or
when trying to shutdown from Safe Mode you get the error message, STOP
0x0000009F Driver_Power_State_Failure. The solution is to
get the updated TPKD.SYS file from PACE.
- QUICK-SWITCHING USER ACCOUNTS.
One reported quirk affecting shutdown is the three-account
shuffle. Windows XP gives the ability to rapidly bounce between
user accounts, with Win+L. If at least three user accounts exist, and
you quick-switch through all three, and then log off all three in reverse
order — “backing out” in an orderly way — then the machine may hang
on shutdown. There may be other variations of account shuffling that
cause this, but this one, clear example was provided by newsgroup correspondent
John Ward. Microsoft has now identified something similar as a bug,
in MSKB 320008,
“You May Not Be Able to Shut Down Your Windows XP Computer.” The situation
they describe is that only one user is logged on, quick-switching is
used, and “Windows is under heavy stress.” A supported patch is available;
see the article for details.
- USING SHUTDOWN SCRIPTS & 802.1x
AUTHENTICATION PROTOCOL. This combination can cause Win XP
to take in excess of 10 minutes to shutdown normally. (IEEE 802.1x
is an authentication standard for both wireless networks and wired
Ethernet networks.) Here’s how the dominoes fall: The 802.1x authentication
protocol stops after the user logs off. Shutdown scripts run after
the user logs off. If the script is on a network share and the connection
is no longer available (since authentication has terminated), the script
can’t run. The default time-out for shutdown scripts is 10 minutes.
So the computer sits there 10 minutes before continuing with its shutdown.
(Reference: MSKB 311787.)
- MISMATCHED RAM. Correspondent
Morten Bech reported that a combination of PC-100 and PC-133 RAM was
the source of his shutdown problem. When he resolved the mismatch (by
removing the PC-100 RAM), he also resolved the shutdown problem. A
general reminder of a great general tip: You will get the best results
if all RAM in a particular computer matches in all respects!
- CHANGE NTFS TO FAT32? MOVE THE
PAGEFILE? Correspondent “Curiefleas” wrote that his reboot-on-shutdown
problem was solved when he used a third party partitioning program
to convert his NTFS partition to FAT32. It isn’t clear why this would
be the case, but the tip was worth passing along. In a possibly related
vein, other correspondents have reported a shutdown problem in XP either
being caused by, or resolved by, relocating the pagefile! Is there
some common issue involving substantial moving of the hard drive’s
contents? These two hints intrigued me in light of a seemingly dissociated
shutdown problem reportedly occurring in Win ME only
immediately after a defrag. These all may be unrelated to each other
— or not. I list them here as part of the ongoing data collection.
- SHUTDOWN PROBLEMS IN WINDOWS NT/2000.
In researching known causes of shutdown problems in earlier versions
of NT-family operating systems, most of what I found referred to problems
that were resolved in later versions. There is no reason to suspect
their recurrence. For example, there were quite a few shutdown issues
identified in NT 3.x that didn’t survive to NT 4.0. Very predictable
causes were involved most often, especially difficulty with
some 16-bit applications or specific hardware incompatibilities.
Very few shutdown failure scenarios are documented for Windows 2000.
All that I found were conflicts with specific software, specific
hardware, or drivers. While these three frame a wide set of
possibilities, they are sufficiently narrow to be very
encouraging when joined with what we are seeing with Win XP. If approved
compatible hardware and software are used, including XP-specific drivers,
we see almost no shutdown problems at all. If other hardware or software
is used... well, that gives us a starting place to focus our investigations.
- SHUTDOWN PROBLEMS IN WINDOWS 9x.
As stated at the beginning, I recommend that, if nothing above resolves
your Win XP shutdown problem, try those troubleshooting steps that have worked for Windows 9x operating
systems to help us establish a track record of exactly what does
and does not apply, from that protocol, to the emergent scenarios in
Windows XP.
(This page is also
reproduced, with my permission, on Windows XP Mania.)
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