Tuesday 19 June 2018

Why does it sometimes take a long time for windows to shutdown?

I'm not sure if this is a programming question exactly, but it does affect my work quite a bit. I have a project I'm working on where a program has to perform certain tasks on startup. The project itself is no problem, but testing it is. Windows XP and Vista is taking a long time to shutdown.


When Windows tries to shut down the hard drive sometimes seems to thrash constantly. It can take from 1 to 3 minutes with the windows screen sitting there saying "Shutting down please wait." There is no indication of what is happening and I can't seem to monitor the process because any programs I try to leave running get terminated. Restarts seem to go bit faster.


I've disabled automatic windows updates so that's the problem. I've also ran anti-virus and anti-spyware programs and the system appears to be clean. I generally have a few browser windows open, putty, python and visual studio.



  1. Why does Windows XP/Vista take so long to shutdown sometimes but not all the time?

  2. What exactly happens during the shutdown process?

  3. Is there anything I can do to speed up the shutdown process?


Thank you

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