To begin with , there are several reasons why windows takes an excessive amount of time for shut down to be complete , in order to understand why this happens we must remember that windows os is not a single program , but rather a collection of individual services.Each of these must be stopped during shut down. Therefore any problem related to any of these may prolong the shut down process or cause a crash .
A potential cause for this problem is that windows contains an option to erase the system's virtual virtual memory and system hibernation cache at shut down.These features are disabled by default because they take a long time to complete and make the sytem look as if it crashed.But sum privacy features enable it causing this problem.So in order to see whether thse features are enabled in your pc all you have to do is go to run and enter GPEDIT.MSC after which navigate through the tree to computer configuration/windows settings/security settings/local ploicies/security options.Locate clear virtual memory pagefile option in the
column to the right and verify that it's disabled .If it's enabled you can disable it by double clicking on the settings and choosing the disable option.

This post has been edited by midnitesun: Feb 22 2006, 08:13 PM

A major component of both startup and shutdown times are the programs that the computer loads at startup and must shut down at shutdown. Go to start, then run, then type msconfig and click the startup tab. then remove everything that is unnecessary, such as a music program, adobe acrobat, printer/scanner, etc. the only thing I leave is the virus scan/gaurd.

I don't care how complex an OS is. If you design one and charge a ridiculisly high price for it, make sure it is error free and if there is possibility that it will run slowly - tell us.

Well there may be lot of open applications open in the computer so it may take a longer time to shut down.
make sure that you close all active applications on the computer before you do a shut down.
if windows Ctrl+Del +Alt end all programs.
and then do a shut down.
also check for any viruses on the computer
and make sure you habve sufficient memory and good microprocessor installed in your computer.

Long shutdown times (and startup for that matter) can be due to a large number of startup programs as mentioned above. It annoys the heck out me the number programs that wehen installed are included in the startup of your computer. A lot of the programs don't need to be running in the backgound all time, but it seems the developers like have their program chewing up your precious memory. Some classic examples of this are Quicktime, Realplayer, Acrobat to name but a few. To speed up shutdown and startup times, look for these memory hogs in your startup group and disable/remove them.

It doesnt take that long for my computer to boot up/down. I guess its because I tweaked some of the settings on my computer, defragment frequently, and have a low amount of diskspace.

Estimated times:

Boot-Up = 3 mins
Shut-Down = 30 secconds

The best thing you can do if your computer is still fast is making a diskimage (with Norton Ghost or Acronis Disk image) and burn it on a DVD or CD.

Most of the time your computer will get slower in a few months.
Since you install (and remove) some things on it.

Some reasons why Windows is getting slow after a while :

- The storage of some temporary files (like IE , Windows , ... ).
- Fragmented swap file
- Big size of the registry file.
- Infection with spyware.

Some of the things can be cleaned with Ccleaner http://www.ccleaner.com/
It's a free program and clears most of the (useless) chache files.
For the Spyware you could use some free programs to clean it.

Back when I had Norton, my compouter would take 30 minutes minimum to shut down. I noticed something was wrong, but couldnt exactly what was wrong. So one day, I decided to dump Norton for Avast, and my computer started shutting down normally. So it might be how many programs Windows needs to close, try to cut down on them.

Wow... 30 minutes to shut down... That almost sounds like my laptop... except it would take that long to start up. It would normally crash shortly into anything I was doing, so shutdowns weren't much of a problem, because I'd have to just use the power key which was next to instant. I didn't really like using that method, but there was really nothing else that I could do, because the computer would just be locked up and couldn't function at all. I'm thinking some of that is why the start up is so long, because it messed the computer up with all the poor shutdowns... but I also think that there was some bad creating that was done when they made the laptop or something, cause it was a crappy one that the school forced us to use. That, and it hardly had enough ram or whatever to run hardly any of the programs that we needed. Anyway, yea...