Korean Job Discussion Forums

Binch Lover · Joined: 25 Jul 2005

I just got a new computer about a month ago. Sometimes, I press the shut down button on Windows Vista and go out. When I come back hours later, the computer is still on and the screen says Windows is shutting down.

I tried googling the problem, but couldn't find a good answer. Something about the registry. I ran CCleaner but it didn't change anything.

What's up?

Demophobe · Joined: 17 May 2004

Try booting into safe mode, then shutdown from there. If it shuts down fine, then it is a service that is hanging. It also may be an open registry key (typically the user key leaked problem) and it will hang forever.

Do you have SP2 installed? I don't know if this will help, but the solution to this may actually be a bit complex, and I haven't the time to post in detail. You may want to go to the "event viewer" (in "administrative tools") and check the windows system log for errors. This will show you exactly what was hanging on shutdown and give you error codes and the like. Post those here or Google them...

bassexpander · Joined: 13 Sep 2007 Location: Someplace you'd rather be.

Do you have an HP printer?

It's a known fact that the drivers on many HP printers are crap, and will make your computer hang during shutdown or sleep modes. Only had problems with XP, though.

neil537 · Joined: 15 Jan 2009 Location: Incheon, South Korea

I have Korean Vista, and for a while couldn't figure out what 'shutdown' was in the Start menu, so I installed a little thing on the side bar that has shutdown/restart/standby etc. When you click on the shutdown button it will automatically shutdown the computer, usually very quickly, or sometimes it will take a little longer if i've been running Bittorrent or Limewire. It has never failed to shutdown my computer though. Maybe worth a try?

crescent · Joined: 15 Jan 2003 Location: yes.

Demophobe · Joined: 17 May 2004

crescent · Joined: 15 Jan 2003 Location: yes.

June12345678 · Joined: 19 Feb 2009 Location: Seoul

Had no idea about the HP printer drivers screwing with XP. Now I understand why my XP is so buggy.

eamo · Joined: 08 Mar 2003 Location: Shepherd's Bush, 1964.

hugekebab · Joined: 05 Jan 2008

Windows has a safety feature that waits for all programs to shut down before it shuts down itself. I thought with Vista that there is a default set for this.

You can tweak it in the registry, try turning it down to a five second wait for other programs to shut down and then see if that helps.

open the Registry Editor (in Vista, press the Windows key, type regedit, and press Enter; in XP, click Start > Run, type regedit, and press Enter), and navigate in the left pane to HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Control Panel/desktop (or Desktop). Double-click WaitToKillAppTimeout in the right pane, and change the value data (measured in milliseconds) to 1000-if you're in a real hurry--or something larger, if you want to give your recalcitrant apps a little more time to call it quits. Click OK when you're done.

The Windows Registry key that sets the delay before killing applications at shutdown

Use this Registry key to reduce the number of milliseconds you want Windows to wait before killing apps at shutdown.
(Credit: Microsoft)

To reduce the wait before forcing hung applications to close, double-click HungAppTimeout in the right pane of the same key, and change the value data to 2000, or however many milliseconds you want to give the apps to unhang on their own. Of course, a better approach is to figure out why the app is hanging in the first place; I'll cover diagnosing hung applications in a future post: Stay tuned!

You may also want to change the value data of WaitToKillAppTimeout and HungAppTimeout in HKEY_USERS/.DEFAULT/Control Panel/Desktop key to apply the changes to all users on the system.