[3g-g]

Yep, 17m 11s.

That's how long it took my XP laptop to shut down earlier this afternoon. I read last week that most places of business will not of got any work done this week as it's the lead up to Christmas, parties and such. Well I think my laptop went home a week ago!

[Ben]

Wow, that'd probably have been a new world record for shutting something down, but I bet there's a Vista machine out there somewhere that has beaten it... there are stories of Vista reporting hundreds of years to burn CD's and such :D

[3g-g]

Yeah I saw that! 150MB files from one drive to another taking 40000 days! Brilliant! Needless to say, my situation means I can finish work almost half an hour early as it takes that time to get everything packed away and shut down!

[Hands0n]

Well I don't know what happened to my original reply :eek: but ......

This is not an uncommon problem with XP. Its all to do with the User Profile, generally, that does not get shut down properly or in a timely manner. A possible solution is to use the Microsoft User Profile Hive Cleanup Service (UPHClean) (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=837115). This often resolves long shut-down issues with XP.

Some more, independent, background information is here (http://www.askdavetaylor.com/windows_shutdown_restart_and_boot_take_forever.htm l) also. Or a useful Google search (http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=xp+long+shutdown+times&btnG=Google+Search&meta=) may help find more articles and resources :)

But do try the UPHClean Service first, before digging deeper into the OS.