Windows XP hangs when clicking "Turn Off Computer" or when loggingoff, shutting down and restarting

Was just wondering if anyone has encountered a problem like this before. I have a system that hangs when I logoff, shutdown and restart or I click the "Turn Off Computer" icon in the Start Menu to gain access to the "Standby" "Turn Off" and "Restart" buttons. After wuauclt.exe launches and I click the "Turn Off Computer" button it will just sit there for several minutes with the hourglass until finally the menu will come up. If Microsoft Narrator is running the cursor will not change when doing the same thing. This time I changed the properties for the Remote Procedure Call service with Microsoft Management Console to stop the computer from restarting and fixed it by killing the process using Task Manager. (The service is preset to restart the computer in 60 seconds when ending the process at the time of purchasing Windows.) I have no idea what is going on, there is really nothing obscure that is starting up on boot or running. Anyone have suggestions??

Main Specifications
OS: Windows XP Professional Service Pack 3
RAM: 1.75 MB
CPU: Intel Core 2 Q6600 @ 2.40GHz
Motherboard: American Megatrends GF7050VT-M5
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 7050/nForce 610i
HDD: 312 GB and 600 GB
Case: Daokorea M010

On Wed, 6 Apr 2016 23:21:37 -0700 (PDT), wrote:
Was just wondering if anyone has encountered a problem like this before. I
have a system that hangs when I logoff, shutdown and restart or I click
the "Turn Off Computer" icon in the Start Menu to gain access to the
"Standby" "Turn Off" and "Restart" buttons. After wuauclt.exe launches
and I click the "Turn Off Computer" button it will just sit there for
several minutes with the hourglass until finally the menu will come up.
If Microsoft Narrator is running the cursor will not change when doing
the same thing. This time I changed the properties for the Remote
Procedure Call service with Microsoft Management Console to stop the
computer from restarting and fixed it by killing the process using Task
Manager. (The service is preset to restart the computer in 60 seconds
when ending the process at the time of purchasing Windows.) I have no
idea what is going on, there is really nothing obscure that is starting
up on boot or running. Anyone have suggestions??

Main Specifications
OS: Windows XP Professional Service Pack 3
RAM: 1.75 MB
CPU: Intel Core 2 Q6600 @ 2.40GHz
Motherboard: American Megatrends GF7050VT-M5
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 7050/nForce 610i
HDD: 312 GB and 600 GB
Case: Daokorea M010

Can you check this on your system and report back if it also hangs the
system during computer shutdown?

1. Create a new user. e.g. JohnDoe
2. Restart computer.
3. Login as JohnDoe.
4. Shutdown computer.

Hi JJ,

When I logoff, shutdown or restart the computer as if I'm logged in as "Administrator" it displays the "Windows is shutting down..." message and nothing else.

On Sun, 10 Apr 2016 00:22:39 -0700 (PDT),
wrote:

Hi JJ,

When I logoff, shutdown or restart the computer as if I'm logged in as "Administrator" it displays the "Windows is shutting down..." message and nothing else.

Sometimes if you just walk away and come back later it will be off.
The problem seems to be a process that refuses to stop. Eventually it
will give up on it's own. Sometimes you can go into task manager and
manually kill it if you think you know what it is. Occasionally I will
just pull the plug.

If I understand it, wuauclt.exe stands for the Windows Update AutoUpdate Client.

I'm experiencing two probelms with the shutdown on my Daokorea M010 computer.

* When I shutdown or restart the computer in normal mode I get the message "Windows is shutting down..." and nothing happens.

* When I logoff in normal mode I get the message "Saving your settings..." and nothing happens.

I've tested it with the Administrator account. I did not create any other user accounts so there may be something wrong with the Administrator account.

I tried a defrag in the C drive in safe mode to remove the problem but it took longer to compress files.

I tested this also with a Windows XP virtual machine showing no problems at all.

wrote:
If I understand it, wuauclt.exe stands for the Windows Update AutoUpdate Client.

I'm experiencing two probelms with the shutdown on my Daokorea M010 computer.

* When I shutdown or restart the computer in normal mode I get the message "Windows is shutting down..." and nothing happens.

* When I logoff in normal mode I get the message "Saving your settings..." and nothing happens.

I've tested it with the Administrator account. I did not create any other user accounts so there may be something wrong with the Administrator account.

I tried a defrag in the C drive in safe mode to remove the problem but it took longer to compress files.

I tested this also with a Windows XP virtual machine showing no problems at all.

You can install UPHClean.

There was a better article than this one, which
detailed what OSes could benefit. UPHCLean logic
is already present in modern versions of Windows,
and that's why this package is not needed in
those cases.

https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/...uphclean-v2-0/

A typical scenario used to be, a user would install
an ATI video card driver, and on the reboot after the
driver installation, the computer would be slow to
shut down. Once this kind of package is installed,
the shutdown time becomes more reasonable again.
It closes the registry hive that the ATI software
was keeping open.

This is what an earlier announcement for the package looked like.

https://web.archive.org/web/20060201...displaylang=en

*******

You should check Event Viewer (Start : Run : eventvwr.msc)
for additional evidence of problems at shutdown.

Knowing the malware status of the computer, and what unique
software is installed, might help as well. If you have
500 programs installed, it can be fairly difficult to
figure out which one contributes to the problem.

The ETW tracing system runs very close to shutdown
time, as well as running early in a reboot. And
can collect information on what software is running
at the time. But the packages are large, and difficult
to use effectively, so this would not be my first choice.

This article is from SP2 timeframe, and things have changed
since then. BootVis is an example of a tool that graphs
startup activities, and it works on SP3. But you need a slightly
better tool to plot both shutdown and startup. And one requirement
would be, that the machine has to eventually (cleanly) shut
down on its own. Pushing the power button while
using an approach like this, would probably damage
the trace, and the NTFS journal would remove the file
fragments.

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/pig...upport-for-xp/

Paul

Hi Paul,

Thanks for the help!

I did a System Restore in my Daokorea M010 computer many times and when I shutdown the computer as if I'm logged in as Administrator with the Remote Procedure Call service running it hangs at "Windows is shutting down...". I have to do a hard turn-off by holding down the Power button.

In May 10th I started the computer in Safe Mode using Disk Cleanup and ALYac to clean up the computer. Then I restarted the computer in normal mode but the problem is back.

In May 17th I installed the User Profile Hive Cleanup Service and got this problem again in normal mode with Remote Procedure Call service running.

In May 21st I started the Malicious Software Removal Tool to do a full scan in my computer. The full scan took three hours. (The version that I have on my Daokorea M010 computer is from September 2015. In the system32 folder I deleted wuauclt.exe and renamed wuauclt1.exe to wuauclt.exe. No updates are downloaded at all.)

When I kill the Remote Procedure Call service and shutdown the computer with Administrator in normal mode it works fine.

wrote:
Hi Paul,

Thanks for the help!

I did a System Restore in my Daokorea M010 computer many times and
when I shutdown the computer as if I'm logged in as Administrator
with the Remote Procedure Call service running it hangs at "Windows
is shutting down...". I have to do a hard turn-off by holding down
the Power button.

In May 10th I started the computer in Safe Mode using Disk Cleanup
and ALYac to clean up the computer. Then I restarted the computer
in normal mode but the problem is back.

In May 17th I installed the User Profile Hive Cleanup Service
and got this problem again in normal mode with Remote Procedure
Call service running.

In May 21st I started the Malicious Software Removal Tool to do
a full scan in my computer. The full scan took three hours. (The
version that I have on my Daokorea M010 computer is from September
2015. In the system32 folder I deleted wuauclt.exe and renamed
wuauclt1.exe to wuauclt.exe. No updates are downloaded at all.)

When I kill the Remote Procedure Call service and shutdown the
computer with Administrator in normal mode it works fine.

Just about every service on the computer,
has a dependency on the RPC service. Killing
the service *should* just about cripple the
computer instantly. If you didn't shut down
the computer immediately after doing that,
it might very well shut itself down (as
there are two services on the computer, security
related, that if those services die, the OS
cannot guarantee security, so the OS would
then decide to shut down). When WinXP suffers
a "security failure", shutdown is supposed to
happen within the next 60 seconds, with the
user having no control of the eventual shutdown.
And if the computer likes to hang, it could
*still* hang, even though the OS itself
has initiated the shutdown.

Killing RPC, really doesn't tell you anything
about "dependencies" or "guilty culprits". Since
just about every other service provided by
Microsoft, depends on RPC. So that observation,
that it behaves normally when RPC is terminated,
doesn't identify the guilty party. We still
don't get a clue as to what else is broken.

The UPHClean installation, is mainly for less-serious
kinds of "hangs" at shutdown. Whatever is wrong
with your setup, it's beyond my skill to diagnose.
It sounds like you're better at figuring this
stuff out than I am.

You can probably uninstall UPHClean, if you don't
think it is helping. It's purpose is to help
close references to open Registry hives. So you
don't have to use it. But it does seem to help
me here with things like ATI video card drivers,
the package of which tends to hold onto a
registry hive at shutdown.

There are diagnostic procedures for debugging
shutdown issues, but they don't work if you
have to hit the power button to complete
shutdown. When the computer hangs and simply
will not complete the shutdown on its own,
no diagnostic can generate a nice log for us
to tell us why. The act of pushing the power
button, is most likely to damage any log files
that are in the process of being written.
And doing a static analysis of the computer,
before even getting to the shutdown point,
is pretty hopeless.

If I didn't want to reinstall the OS from scratch,
to solve this problem, I would probably go to
one of the malware removal sites, describe
your symptoms, and have them recommend their
various scanning procedures. Maybe the damage
is from malware at some point, or perhaps
some "cleaning" of the OS has damaged it.
And some of those malware removal people
are pretty sharp, and they might spot the
thing preventing shutdown as a side-effect
of the malware scan tools. That's a form of
static analysis, but not something I'm
trained in.

What I'm finding in 2016, is commercial
packages can add all sorts of stuff to the
OS, to destabilize it. Causing WinXP to
exhibit a wide range of strange symptoms.
It's pretty difficult to keep this
OS in tip-top shape. It's not that WinXP
is a bad OS, merely that the code added
isn't all that well written. The code
used, just isn't getting tested properly
on WinXP, to make sure it works right.

There are software companies, I can trust
to test their code. And others that just
add bloat without regard for the side-effects.
It won't take you long to spot the differences
in the company products. I had one product,
where most of the trouble happens, when it
decided to self-update to the next revision.
And even though I'd paid good money for it,
it was time to uninstall it and toss it.
Lesson learned.

Paul