Why won't my computer shut down?

[burnselk]

I'm running Windows XP Home Edition and when I go to turn it off at night it won't shut down. It gets to a Windows screen that says "Saving your Settings" and stays there all night.....and there's nothing I can do to change this screen.....no CTRL, ALT, DELETE or anything will affect this screen. It stays right there and won't shut down....about 3/4 of the time this happens........sometimes it goes ahead and shuts down correctly.....but that's rare.

I have to do a "hard" shutdown in order to get it turned off.

I would appreciate your assistance with correcting this problem.

[troy512]

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=xp+shut+down+hangs&btnG=Google+Search

i had a problem when using user switching and shutting down. this fixed it for me.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=1B286E6D-8912-4E18-B570-42470E2F3582&displaylang=en

[deanimator]

Found this handy hint out there

1. Try Start - Run - type in “msconfig”, and click the Startup Tab.
2. Bottom Right, click “disable all”, then apply, then close and have it reboot (it will probably still hang on shutdown right now).
3. After you have it restarted, put a check in the checkbox of the system config utility window, and then hit OK. Now shutdown again.

Did it hang again? If not, then there’s something in the startup menu that is causing your machine to hang when it shutsdown. Now you can go back into msconfig, and start re-checking [one-by-one, and rebooting] the important ones (usually you will only need your antivirus, firewall, and sometimes ISP software running). http://forums.techguy.org/malware-removal-hijackthis-logs/331608-solved-computer-using-windows-xp.html

[esther.david6]

Try CTRL+Shift+Esc and then close your pc.

[burnselk]

Thanks ester, I’ll give your method a try when it happens again. It seems to be doing better now from some unknown reason. I’ll let you know how it turns out if and when I need to use it. Thanks so much for responding.