Laptop slow to shut down

July 12, 2006 7:02 AM

My six month old Dell laptop (WIN XP) has started taking forever shutting down. It seems sometimes like five minutes or more. I recently switched from wireless broadband to Telco ISPs which I suspect may have something to do with the problem. I've done Ad-aware, found some stuff I removed but it doesn't solve the problem. Can anyone suggest what the pblm might be and how I can fix it without spending a lot of precious cash?
posted by NorthCoastCafe to Computers & Internet (9 answers total)

If Ad-aware found some stuff, it's likely there's more stuff it didn't find and remove. Spyware generally takes a multi-prong attack to completely remove. I suspect this is your problem.

MajorGeeks.com has a great forum that helps users clean their systems.

This is a great step-by-step example of the typical process that's needed to clean most problems.
posted by empyrean at 7:09 AM on July 12, 2006

You might try the User Profile Hive Cleanup Service from MS.
posted by sanko at 7:23 AM on July 12, 2006

Maybe it's calling home?

Spooky posting about factory installed keyloggers on Dell laptops.

http://virus.org.ua/unix/keylog/klog.htm
posted by FauxScot at 8:15 AM on July 12, 2006

Empyrean, please repost your link? The original is borked.
posted by canine epigram at 8:16 AM on July 12, 2006

Oops. Borked link is right. Here it is -- Majorgeeks Malware Removal Forum.
posted by empyrean at 8:20 AM on July 12, 2006

fauxscot, the factory installed keylogger appears to be a hoax...
posted by lyam at 8:35 AM on July 12, 2006

Might be your ISP but my Dell (WinXP-H) gradually started doing that too, sans Telco.
posted by salvia at 9:08 AM on July 12, 2006

I had the same problem (slow XP shutdown) awhile back and used this guide to help troubleshoot the problem. Turning off "clear pagefile at shutdown" setting in XP AntiSpy fixed my problem.
posted by squeak at 9:48 AM on July 12, 2006

perhaps this Microsoft solution will help?

There's also discussion on IntelliAdmin.

I haven't tried this yet (though I did download the software.)
posted by anadem at 2:00 PM on July 12, 2006