Vista hiccup

[templar165]

Hello all,
Yesterday, as usual I gave the command to shut down the system. I used the usual way through START>>SHUT DOWN. But there was no response. I chedked if there was any program running in the background, and there wasn't any. I then tried the Alt-F4, which failed too. After repeated tries, the computer just refused to switch off and I had to use the power button.
This incident happened only once. The system was perfectly alright in occasions after this incident.
I use Vista64. I've heard bad things about it, which I agree to great extent. But what is this?

 

[C1]

This is an old trick & it may or may not apply but its easy to do & probably worth a try. It used to be that one needed to get a complete/valid shutdown of the WIN OS. So boot into Safe Mode (F8 Key at boot), then do a normal shutdown. (Jeff Levy - remember him? - used to say to repeat this procedure three times in row). After that use the system normally.

If you still have have problems then it is most likely that you have a process running (thats hidden) and wont release. If this happens I would search MS KB for this issue, but also check MSCONFIG (yes it is still there in VISTA - at least VISA32) & uncheck everything in startup. If the system responds normally then just enable the one or two things in MSCONFIG startup that are really needed.

Oh yes, make sure to comb thru your power options. Make sure nothing has fallen asleep (eg, USB ports or HDDs) and refuse to wake up. For example, I use the power options to turn off HDDs after 2 hrs & the system will pause during the shutdown (after it has been sitting idle) until the HDDs wake up & flush their caches (you can hear the drives spin up). USB ports/hubs also have sleep settings so check them too.

 

[templar165]

@C1 - You were right: My USB fell asleep!
Thank you for the help!