Installed Win XP SP2, now Win XP won't shut down

[Doomer]

Just like the good old days with Win 98. Anybody know anything about this problem ?

Thanks.

 

[Schadenfroh]

where does it hang after you tell it to shut down? or does it even hang?

 

[Doomer]

Yep. It hangs on the "Windows is shutting down screen" just like Win 98 used to do. It didn't do this before SP2.

 

[arsbanned]

Are u using the same PC you were using with Windows 98?

 

[EULA]

My SP2 won't go to standby, but I'm pretty sure thats because I loaded all my drivers after installing SP2...

 

[Doomer]

Originally posted by: arsbanned
Are u using the same PC you were using with Windows 98?

Nope, this is a XP2800 on a A7N8X Deluxe. Win XP has been on it since the build. I never had this problem before SP2.

 

[ajmawer]

So I'm not going insane....
My machine has exactly the same issue -- I've been through 3 Windows reinstalls, disabled devices, reinstalled drivers, and still no go. It's been driving me mad!
It sits there and I can move the mouse around, but it never actually shuts down.

The annoying part about it is that it doesn't happen every time - only after being in use for a while. I have yet to work out the exact behaviour that causes it, though I suspect it might be network related....
I've tried disabling the onboard Intel gigabit NIC and replacing it with a Realtek 8139C, but the problem still persists.

For reference, the hardware is:

Abit IC7-G motherboard (BIOS rev. 25)
SB Live! Value
Onboard sound = off
Onboard LAN (Intel Pro/1000 CT CSA gigabit NIC)
Pentium 4 "C" 3GHz

 

[ajmawer]

For the record, these were slipstreamed WinXP SP2 installs too, so it wasn't an issue that occured by upgarding from SP1...

 

[o9z]

revert back to SP1?

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: Doomer
Just like the good old days with Win 98. Anybody know anything about this problem ? <BR><BR>Thanks.

what happens when you shutdown from safe mode?

 

[VirtualLarry]

I've had that before, in W2K. In my case, it was that the user registry was corrupted, or some application (or more likely, driver/service), had open handles into some registry hives, that they never properly released, and so Windows' didn't want to shut down until they were closed, or some (fairly long, 30sec I think) timeout period occured.

Check for a file called \Windows\Debug\UserMode\userenv.log , see if it has entries in it like this:

USERENV(e0.c8) 06:43:37:984 MyRegUnLoadKey: Hive unload for S-x-x-xx-xxxxxxxxx-xxxxxxxxx-xxxxxxxxx-xxx failed due to open registry key. Windows will try unloading the registry hive once a second for the next 60 seconds (max).
USERENV(e0.c8) 06:43:39:015 MyRegUnLoadKey: The registry hive was successfully unloaded after 1 seconds.
USERENV(e0.c8) 05:55:25:031 MyRegUnLoadKey: Hive unload for S-x-x-xx-xxxxxxxxx-xxxxxxxxx-xxxxxxxxx-xxx failed due to open registry key. Windows will try unloading the registry hive once a second for the next 60 seconds (max).
USERENV(e0.c8) 05:56:25:140 MyRegUnLoadKey: Windows was not able to unload the registry hive.
USERENV(e0.c8) 05:56:25:140 MyRegUnLoadKey: Failed to unmount hive 5
USERENV(e0.c8) 05:56:25:140 UnloadUserProfile: Didn't unload user profile err = 5

 

[Doomer]

OK, it appears that I do have these entries. Now what ?

Also, I've discovered that it does shut down after about 2 minutes.

Thanks

 

[VirtualLarry]

Hmm. Well, you could load your on-disk registry hives into Regedit.exe, and then unload them again. According to Smilin, I think, XP's Registry editor will "fix" any corruption issues when importing/exporting registry hives, but I don't know how well that applies to "live" hives that are being used by the system at the time. Regedit probably doesn't even let you load them seperately, now that I think about it.

I guess the other solution, is to attempt to find out what programs, services, drivers, etc. Are opening user-registry handles and not properly closing them during shutdown. I would check things like AV, firewall, and other resident programs first, and perhaps move on from there.
You might consider, deleting and re-creating whatever Scheduled Tasks that you have listed, I know that XP SP2 has made some changes in the area of Task Scheduler, perhaps there is some interaction with user credentials and the user registry, although that's somewhat speculation on my part.

 

[kylef]

I've seen many systems hang at shutdown due to drivers failing to go into their low power state. This is the last thing that happens before reboot/power off.

Nothing in user mode (not even open file handles, registry handles, etc) should prevent the kernel from shutting down normally. Only invalid kernel mode state can cause this (i.e., drivers or an actual MS bug, which of course isn't possible )

If you're interested, the process works like this:

1. You request the shell to shut down windows (or some app calls the Win32 ExitWindowsEx() function).
2. Csrss.exe (the user-mode portion of the Win32 subsystem) sends a query message to all threads that own top level windows (this allows apps to pop up the "save/discard/cancel" dialog box, and what permits you to hit "cancel" to stop the shutdown).
3. Csrss.exe waits until either all windows respond OK, or their gui thread has been blocked for more than the time defined in the registry key HKCU\ControlPanel\Desktop\HungAppTimeout. If any apps have hit this limit, Csrss pops up the infamous "End Program" dialog box allowing you to forcibly terminate hung apps.
4. Csrss.exe tells the service control manager (SCM) process to exit (services.exe).
5. SCM tells all Win32 services to stop. Csrss monitors this and waits for HKLM\CurrentControlSet\Control\WaitToKillServiceTimeout before forcibly killing services.exe. (Note that any services that haven't saved state or shut down normally by this point WILL be killed immediately, possibly corrupting their caches or databases. Many admins running servers in production environments purposely set this value higher for large databases to be closed normally (this is especially true with Exchange Server which does lots at shutdown)).
6. Csrss.exe calls the native API method NtShutdownSystem(), which tells the PnP Manager to do what is necessary to shut down the system.
7. The PnP manager does a number of things, which includes informing all device drivers (via an IRP) to lower their power states appropriately. THIS is where device drivers typically hang at shutdown. To transition from D0 (full-on) to D3 (off) means they must save any state necessary, flush caches, free hardware resources, etc. This is complicated code to get exactly right.
8. Finally the HAL is told to reboot or power off (depending on which kind of shutdown you selected). If you don't have an ACPI or APM-aware HAL, you will get the "Safe to Shut Down" screen and will have to power down yourself.


Note that standby and hibernation are different entirely.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: kylef

I've seen many systems hang at shutdown due to drivers failing to go into their low power state. This is the last thing that happens before reboot/power off.

Nothing in user mode (not even open file handles, registry handles, etc) should prevent the kernel from shutting down normally.

Yes, but he did later state that it did shut down after 2 minutes. I'm not sure what the user registry unload timeout is set to on XP SP2, but that behavior is consistent with what I have observed in the past with W2K failing to shut down. It is a known problem. (I would have hoped/assumed that it had been fixed in SP2, but then again, the "fix" for W2K didn't actually fix the issue either.)

Btw, thanks for that detailed list of shutdown steps. It seems that, at least according to that, NT does in fact attempt an "orderly shutdown". If so, why doesn't MS implement some sort of "on-shutdown" script capability? That would seem very useful to me.

PS. The shutdown delay caused by the open user registry handles, at least in W2K, occurs before the OS/machine shutdown steps. Ie. screen shows "Saving user information..." (something like that), after all apps have been closed and the user desktop/workstation has closed, but before it says "Windows is shutting down...". I don't think that XP displays those dialogs at all.

 

[ajmawer]

To follow up on this, a reinstall with slipstreamed SP1 has everything running fine -- so it definately seems to be an issue specific to SP2.
At some point I might try SP2 again, but after my previous experience I'm in not great rush to try again...

 

[sisooktom]

I have what sounds like the same problem as ajmawer. Occasionally, XP will just decide to ignore any request to logoff, shutdown, switch user, or even open task manager. I can interact with Windows just fine in this state, run programs, etc. But if I click log off and then either shutdown or switch user, the dialog just disappears and nothing happens. The system also won't respond to the power button, I have to reset. Any ideas on this?