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S_Mani

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Vista fails to shutdown/restart properly

Hi,
I am facing a problem in shutting down and restarting my Vista machine.

From the fly-out menu when I click on shutdown OR restart , the system does nothing. But after clicking shutdown if I again click on log off . the system goes for shutdown. So now what I am doing is first click on Shutdown/restart and then click again on logoff.

Any idea why this happens and how to fix this?

thanks
S.Mani
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LeeTutor
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bluewolf

I am guessing that this is a Vista Upgrade machine, or a machine that was purchased right when vista came out. Vista is a HUGE memory hog! I mean Huge. Most of the machines that use Vista don't have enough memory to support functions. 1 GB doesn't cut it and 2GB is still low believe it or not. Being that I don't know your systems specs or background I am going to recoment that you go to this link:

http://www.download.com/Trend-Micro-HijackThis/3000-8022_4-10379544.html?tag=lst-0-1

and download Hijackthis. Scary name but don't worry it's a great freeware program. After you install click on scan and save log file. It only takes a few seconds and a notepad file will pop up. Copy the entire contents of the file and then go to

www.hijackthis.de

and pastethe file into the space provided. Then click on analyze. This will produce a report that will tell you everything that is running on your machine and what program it belongs to and if it's nasty or not. Find all of the nastys and then go back to the HJT program and select the boxes next to them. Then hit fix items.

This may free up a ton of memory from stuff on your computer that you don't even know is there. Also type in msconfig in the search box under the start menu. Click on the startup tab and see whats starting up on your computer.

Good luck.
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ASKER

Hi bluewolf,

thanks for the response. My system has 1.5 GB RAM and  a P4 3 GHz Processor. I would say, I don't believe it to be a memory crisis or system doesn't go to a non responding state. If it was due to lack of free memory, how is it responding to a log off request or any other operation?

I am having problem only with shutdown and restart. All the other operations are fine. So any other ideas on this?

thanks
S.Mani

well Lee's Idea is a very good one. If that doesn't work then maybe get your WIndows install disk and run a repair on the installation. Also I use Webroot spy sweeper to scan for spyware and virus' you could have something like that blocking your shutdown requests. One last thing you could check for is programs that are running updates. They won't let you shut down if they are updating. You could possibly log off though and there process' might still run. Did you run the HJT? how was the log file. You could post it here and let us have a look at it if you want. What anti virus do you use?
I didn't mean that webroot blocks shutdown requests before I meant that spyware or viruss sometimes can.

Anthony
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ASKER

Hi bluewolf,

thanks for the quick followup. The chances of having a spyware is very less since I just installed Vista today morning only and have not browsed any sites except MS for downloading updates. One thing I recollect, I started facing this problem after some updates were installed from MS for Vista.

About HJT, I shall try running and post the log once I am back at the system. In the mean while , if you get, any workaround for this please let me know. Shall try that too..

thanks
S.Mani

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So, have you tried my suggestions?
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ASKER

thanks guys, sorry for the delay in responding... Unfortunately I had a power problem in my area and couldnt try at home yesterday. Will surely try today and update the info.

thanks
S.Mani
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ASKER

Hi Lee,
 Event viewer & SFC did not help. Finally I went for the shutdown workaround suggested by you. Also created a shortcut in the shortcut menu to avoid accidental shutdown. Thanks for the help.

I believe Bluewolf also deserves a part of the score, for his continuous followups and suggestions.So I have split the points.

thanks
S.Mani
Thanks I ppreciate it . Good Job Lee!