Windows XP hangs when turning off PC

Doublespresso

Hi all

When I try to turn the PC off, windows xp does all that is expected except that in the last stages, it hangs with just the walpapaer image on screen(no icons).

I have to amnually press the button to turn off, and then its ok. The next reboot to turn on, goes ok.

It does this all the time.. any idea why? How to remedy?
I havent installed anything special/unusual so cant thinkw hy it should do this..

T4i

Do you notice the HDD light flashing when its stuck on the wallpaper with no icons?

Have you got SP2 installed? What anti-virus/firewall do you have?

bingo_bango

I used to get this on my work PC. It turned out to be an Adobe reader plugin which wouldn't load (almost sure it was the accessibility one), and seemed to continue trying to load in the background. This wouldn't let XP close down.
Tried a restore point prior to the problem starting?

Lord_Gardener

Have you tried CTRL+ALT+DELETE to see if any progs aren't shutingdown?

Worth running defrag and ScanDisk to tidy up your hard disk and to check for errors.

pchelpman

One more thought added to the mix ....

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q307274

humfer

This used to happen to me and I think it was Mcafee causing everything to slow down...

Doublespresso

thanks for the replies, I will try the various suggestions.

For the record, I have ZoneAlarm and AVG and SP2 is installed.