Win XP not shutting down.
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Discussion

daveenty

Original Poster:

2,383 posts

235 months

Wednesday 3rd February 2010
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As title really.

Not my machine, but a friends Acer Travelmate 5730.

Brand new machine (last week) bought with Vista installed, though with recovery disks for XP which he wanted to put on it. I don't know why, didn't bother asking, though the rest of his companies equipment all runs XP so I assumed this was the reason.

Anyhow, I was asked if I could do a re-install of the OS back to XP. (As I'm his mate and play with computers)

Sure I said. Mistake number one. Installation was a breeze, 2 disks, one with drivers one with windows image. (I think, though am happy to be corrected)

After the install, everything went smoothly, connected to the network, updated windows via MS etc. This was when the problem first started to show. "Windows needs to reboot to finish installing your new software" it tells me. Half an hour later and it's still on the *Windows is shutting down* screen.

I've trawled the web for answers, though the only ones I've found seem to relate to earlier (pre SP1) versions.

It's' been back to the supplier this week, though all they've done is install another version of Vista. In other words, back to ssquare one.

Could it be a dodgy recovery disk? If so, would the supplier swap it for another?

Any suggestions would be welcome here. Thanks for reading, sorry it got long winded in parts smile

Edited by daveenty on Wednesday 3rd February 18:59

TheD

3,142 posts

224 months

Wednesday 3rd February 2010
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What happened when you rebooted it. Didn't it start

daveenty

Original Poster:

2,383 posts

235 months

Wednesday 3rd February 2010
quotequote all
Won't reboot. Have to close it down manually by holding the start button.

Boots fine afterwards, but then won't shut down again. Every time.

I've even re-installed it again (just to check it wasn't something I'd done) and had exactly the same.

Everytime you go to either shut down or restart, it just hangs on the *is shutting down* screen.

Tried un-installing all non relevant software and still the same after every item. Re-boot - - - Hang on shutting down screen.

member007

1 posts

194 months

Friday 12th March 2010
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I just purchased a couple of these and had the exact same problem. They had a bios version of 1.34 so I upgraded to the latest 1.36 which did not fix it. I then downgraded to bios v1.30 and this solved the problem.

Jinx

11,945 posts

285 months

Friday 12th March 2010
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Right click "My computer" select computer management and have a look at the event viewer messages. Probably be a Error or warning there relating to a specific service or application. De-active service or uninstall app (or both) and try again.

Edited by Jinx on Friday 12th March 15:34

lestag

4,614 posts

301 months

Saturday 13th March 2010
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Typically this is an application that will not respond to the shutdown command. before shutting down press ctrl-alt del and manually stop each process that is running under your username (not system) It will likely be one of these that is causing the problem

Conian

8,030 posts

226 months

Saturday 13th March 2010
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I'm told by the IT guy at work (STANDARD NERD!) that it's an issue of MS Word 2003 and XP
Even if you've not run Word, your email program might have used it.

lestag

4,614 posts

301 months

Saturday 13th March 2010
quotequote all
Conian said:
I'm told by the IT guy at work (STANDARD NERD!) that it's an issue of MS Word 2003 and XP
Even if you've not run Word, your email program might have used it.
The issue can be with outlook plugins, also ( as yout TI guy points out) that you are using word as an email editor in outlook.

It can also be due to internet explorer plugins and a number of other misbehaving programs.

Quite often it is the one taking up most, if not all of the CPU cylces and can be easy to spot.

Resolving why that process has gone bad is another issue....

daveenty

Original Poster:

2,383 posts

235 months

Saturday 13th March 2010
quotequote all
Forgot about this thread. Sorry about that smile

It turned out that (after the third re-install) it was the camera driver causing the problems.

The last install was done using the original disks, and then deleting all additional software from add/remove.

Time consuming, but once the camera stuff came out it shut down normally.

Therefore another format and install, removed just the camera soft, replaced with a version from Acer's site and it worked fine.

I'm assuming that it must have been buggy software on the recovery disk?

Anyhow, thanks for all the replies.

@Jinx, nothing red crossed in event viewer unfortunately frown this would have saved me a shed load of time.