DescentBB

This is a problem I've been experiencing for some time that just suddenly popped up a while back. Every 5-10 times I attempt to shut down my computer, seemingly at random, XP completely locks up as soon as the usual blue shut-down screen appears. It never even gets to displaying any of the \"Logging off\" or \"Saving your settings\" text; it just...stops. I've let it sit there for a half-hour or so, to no avail; I'm left with having to turn it off manually, and it always starts up again without any issues. The strangest part is, I very recently reformatted (to solve some crazy HD corruption issue, but that's another story...), and yet the problem remains. I'm running a P4 3.0 with 512 MB of RAM and a Radeon X300 64MB; I can look up any additional hardware/program info as needed. Note that any solutions that involve replacing hardware probably won't do me much good, seeing as how this machine is a rather ****ty Dell and that I'm planning to finally take the plunge and build my own machine from scratch at some point in the near future. Thanks in advance!

Also, please note that the poster is an utter n00b, so try not to fry my brain with big words or scary acronyms.

Got a X-Fi soundcard ?

Total system freezes on XP are probably hardware related. Stuff to try:

- Make sure audio/video/other drivers are up to date.
- Make sure CPU is not overheating
- Make sure you are not running out of disk space.
- Make sure your memory is ok (via a memory tester).

Nope, Grendel; my card's an SB Live! 24-bit.

Topher, 1 and 3 should be fine, and I don't have the foggiest idea how to check either 2 or 4.

2. Get a program like Asus Probe to monitor your temps.
4. Use memtest86. A lot of Live-CD Linux distros include it as a boot option.

or use mbm5 (motherboard monitor 5)

you can get memtest to boot from a floppy or usb drive as well

Thanks for the suggestions; I'll let you know what I find out.

(To be honest, though, I'm a little wary to even investigate the problem further, because even if there is some physical issue with the machine, I'm definitely not going to sink any money into fixing it, so I'd have to just live with it anyway. )

Overheats and memory errors would probably cause problems while the machine is running, a hardlock on shutdown is probably caused by some application or service not exiting gracefully. Try cleaning the system up, removing unwanted applications and services that don't need to be running anymore.

The system event viewer might catch the error, but I doubt it with a hardlock. The best approach is to start de-junking windows and updating your drivers. A complete virus and spyware sweep is an order as well.

I agree with Krom. I used to have problems with Juno dial-up software not terminating when windows was shutting down.

i second krom's suggestion. i had the same issue with a service not shutting down properly and system events caught it so i killed the service completely and the problem went away.

Disable any network adapters on the system and see if the problem remains. (then disable any other non-system critical devices i.e. Sound Cards etc)

Ensure BIOS is up to date with latest revision.

Disable advanced power management and test (may cause problems on Laptops so last resort)

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I'm not entirely sure how to go about re-initializing a system, but seeing as how I just reformatted this thing and am just about finished getting all of my stuff back on it, I'm guessing that it would just be more trouble than it's worth at this point.

At this point, I'll probably just deal with the problem; having to hold in a power button every eighth time I shut down isn't the hugest deal in the world. I will try poking around my services and programs to see if anything could be causing a conflict.

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