Xp Shutdown

[EZ-Rider]

Whenever I shut down XP, I have to click START, SHUTDOWN and OK twice. Thing is, I have no idea how to correct it. Any advice?

[Tripredacus]

There are two reasons for this to occur, and yet both could be affecting you at the same time.

The first is that there is a program that is running on your computer that is causing this issue.

The second is that Windows is having difficulty ending a process or program (or multiple) on time, causing a delay. And you are likely telling it to restart before it reaches the total time-out allotment before it kills the service(s) altogether. Say if Windows has 50 processes running, and maybe the 3rd one is having a problem. So it has 30 seconds to finish closing before Windows ends it by force. Then maybe because Windows killed that process, the next one it gets to can't close within 30 seconds because a dependent process is not running anymore. For some reason when this happens it seems that Windows gets with the program if you tell it to shut down again and then it does it all real quick. Say also, for example there is a virus on the computer where the special permissions have been altered where the SYSTEM account doesn't have the authority to kill the process, a hang can occur.

In Windows NT 4 there was a registry setting that you could change the default timeout for killing a process on a shutdown or restart, but I don't know what it is in XP.

I think the second reboot command working thing is a newer feature, because older versions of Windows that had this problem (say NT 4) you could keep telling it to reboot until you were blue in the face if Windows was having a problem with a process or program.

[mara-]

You can reduce your timeout in following key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop

Change values of following keys: HungAppTimeout, WaitToKillAppTimeout

Values are in milliseconds. I use value 0 for both keys. Also, you should put value 1 to key AutoEndTasks.

Also, there is a key for service:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control

You need to change value of WaitToKillServiceTimeout. I also use 0 value for this.

Cheers