Slow shut down

[muscleneck]

I am running Win XP. Lately, evertime I shutdown my comp, it hangs for about two minutes. I open the Task manager thinking that there is a program that is slow to shut down but I can't figure out which one (if that iis it at all..). Then it hangs at the last windows shutdown screen. Any suggestions?

[ronallandottk]

Try to remember what was the last program you installed before the problem first appeared. That may be the cause. If you can't remember, the next time you shutdown and the PC hangs, enter the task manager (while the PC is shutting down, but apparently frozen), click on the Applications tab, and see what applications are keeping the PC on. If there are many applications, try ending them one at a time. If you end an application and Windows XP continues to shut down, you've found the culprit.

If you can't identify the rogue program using this method, use the task manage while shutting down again and instead click on the Processes tab. Click on the CPU column header to sort the processes according to their CPU usage. The problem program is probably one of those using up the most CPU cycles.

Hope this helps.