Vista Woes....won't shut down / respond

I've done a search on this topic but most of them don't seem to have the specific symptoms my laptop is having.

Basically what is happening is
1. Windows Explorer will freeze / crash on startup requiring explorer.exe to be restarted.
2. Windows Update refuses to install two programs: Windows Defender x64 for February, and the definition update that goes with it.
3. Two issues happen when I shut down:
a. The system goes through normal shut down procedure and then hangs when it says shut down with the little circle rotating under it...last time I just thought Vista was working on something and left it alone for 24 hours and it still didn't shut down.
b. The system will not go through normal shutdown procedure, freeze at the desktop and become unresponsive.

I have all the latest patches / updates from Microsoft and the ones through system update from Lenovo. Weird thing is this happened about a week after I got the latest batch of updates from Microsoft. Sadly, the latest system restores I have don't go back to before that week.

Any suggestions will be helpful.
If not, I guess I'll just have to go through another clean install

 

bump
any suggestions / ideas?

 

bump....doesn't seem like many people visit the windows forums...haha
i guess clean install next weekend then

 

Clean install is the easiest way out. Or uninstall the update.

 

try this for shutting down.

Navigate to the following registry branch:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control

On the right pane, double click on ‘WaitToKillServiceTimeout’ or right click on it and choose modify. Change the default value of WaitToKillServiceTimeout of 20000 to lesser value, such as 5000 or even 1000, depending on your preference.

When the value of WaitToKillServiceTimeout expires, the system notifies the user that the service has not stopped, and prompt the user with option to force the service task to stop or continue to wait.

Reduce the wait time for user processes and applications to be killed

As with services, Windows will also wait for a while, depending on WaitToKillAppTimeout setting, before starting to shut down and kill open applications and user processes when the user want to shutdown, restart or log off. The wait time or time out can be reduced to speed up the shutdown process.

Navigate to the following registry branch:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop

On the right pane, double click on WaitToKillAppTimeout (or right click on the registry key and select Modify), and enter a new value which is less than the default value of 20000. The value can be 1000 or 5000 or any other numeric value, depending on your preference. When the WaitToKillAppTimeout registry entry timeout or expires, the End Task dialog box appears, stating that the process did not respond, and allowing user to End the task.

On the right pane also, double click on HungAppTimeout (or right click on the registry key and select Modify) and change the value to less numerical value than 5000 (default value), e.g. 1000. HungAppTimeout specifies how long the system waits for user processes to end after the user clicks the End Task command button in Task Manager or after the user has selected to restart or shutdown the system.

Then navigate to HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop\ registry branch, and do the same as above to change and modify the value of WaitToKillAppTimeout and HungAppTimeout registry keys.

Automatically end, terminate and kill user processes or tasks on shutdown or logoff

Even if you have set the HungAppTimeout registry entry to a very low value, what happen is that when HungAppTimeout time out due to a hung applications or unable to terminate tasks or not responding to the end task request, it will prompt user with a End Task dialog box to ask if user wish to end the process. By changing to the value of registry key AutoEndTasks to 1, we can ask Windows to end all processes that timeout when shut down or log out from Windows automatically, without asking for user input or interaction. Default value of the key is 0, which mean no user processes will end automatically.

AutoEndTasks is located at HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop registry branch.

 

how would you go about doing so? If i recall correctly, vista doesn't have an option to display installed updates like xp does. of course, i could (most probably) be wrong.

 

i'll try the registry keys and see how they go. thanks!

 

the registry modifications didn't work. time to clean install i guess.

 

Have you tried removing the drivers for either the sound or wireless? I had a similar issue with my desktop, and it was solved by using an XP audio driver. Once I removed the Vista driver, the freezes stopped. It's worth a try.

You don't happen to have SP1 installed, do you?

 

You are.

It does have an option; just open Windows Update and look around.

And please don't double post so much. It's one of those subtly undermining things....

 

no, i'm not planning to install SP1 until after it's public release and maybe a few months after that to see what bugs are going on.

tried uninstalling the drivers for sound / wireless and that didn't seem to work either. some process is hanging while my system is on and i can't seem to figure out which one. my system will shut down fine if i just boot up vista, log in and shut down, but if i book up vista, log in, wait an hour (while doing nothing to the laptop), and shutdown, the system will hang.

@pixelot: sorry about that...getting wayy too tired in the morning. i'll try to keep my posts down to a minimum. I found the windows update thing and uninstalled a bunch of updates and those didn't seem to make the problem go away either. on top of that, those updates don't show up now as installed or in the windows update tab.

 

Open task manager, and check your processes tab; there's a CPU column, where you can see what's taking up the CPU.

I'm sorry if I seemed sharp with you. I totally understand about being tired and working on your non-responsive computer. I mean, I had to re-install Windows 5 BLOODY TIMES this weekend.

So I hope you get it working. If you're having problems with updates, installing them in small chunks sometimes isolates the problem(s).

Cheers!

 

Can you hibernate or anything else?

 

Thanks for the advise. I'll see what's taking up the CPU processes on shutting down. If I clean install again, this will be the 7th time I've clean installed Vista in the past 6 months. I'm seriously thinking about switching to XP / Ubuntu but since my work requires I get familiar with Vista to help troubleshoot any problems that come along...I'm stuck with it. (Luckily, I haven't had to deal with this problem yet with the computers I've worked on) I'll follow your advise when / if I clean install. Just install the updates one at a time and see if it causes instability.

hibernate / sleep and anything that requires vista (not the user but the whole OS) to "exit / shut down" stop working after the laptop has been on for awhile.

 

Hmmm...Well I haven't had a hang problem in a long time, but back when I was running my last desktop (2006?), Zonealarm used to hang every time I shut down XP, and I'd have to force quit the program before shut down.

This also happened to me when using FreeRam XP Pro for a long time. I honestly never found a decent solution, as I had to reformat in both cases anyway, but I sympathize.

My only suggestion was going to be that WaitToKillServiceTimer regedit...but I saw someone else posted that

When it happened to me in the past, I had to initiate the Windows shut down, then go through each process individually and kill every one until I found what was causing the hang. Really annoying!

 

definitely....too lazy to go through the troubleshooting since exams are coming up. i'll probably just reformat / reinstall. at least my desktop is still reliable in shutting down =]

UPDATE: the problem may have been caused by my VX Revolution being plugged in while the system was shutting down. last night I had the laptop on for about 3 hours (typically the laptop would not shut down at this stage) without the mouse plugged in. shut down the computer and it worked. either the mouse / docking station is causing the problem or those updates i uninstalled fixed the problem. will do further testing later today.

question: how do you bring up the task manager while the system is shutting down? once i get to the "shutting down" screen...no key combination can bring it up. and if i bring up task manager before pressing shut down, task manager shuts down and the system goes to the "shutting down" screen.