Win2K shutdown

[Wojtek]

When I always do shutdown or restart,
win2k stays at the "saving preferences" screen for 2 minutes, no disk activity (but the little animated blue bar scrols) before finally going to the "shuting down computer" screen.

This is getting really annoying, any way to disable this?

[Robert]

Sometimes it's because your user profile is so big that it takes a while for it to backup and shut down everything.

Try deleting your user profile and starting over as well as empting your cache/temp/ and all that goodies.

[Wojtek]

my profile is 611Mb

May it be because of this?
Is this small/little?

[Robert]

Mine is 78mb (Windows XP).

[Wojtek]

humm..
Is there a way to exclude certain folders of beeing 'backed up'?

or maybe "mount" the desktop to another folder outside of documents and settings folder

[Robert]

I'm not too familiar with WIndows 2000. My dad runs it but I really don't like it as much as XP. I feel XP is faster in preformance than Win2k. Sry.

[CareBear]

Set it to verbose startup/shutdown messages and see which one it 'hangs' on.. the standard ones don't give you too much information to work with.

[LeX]

Originally posted by CareBear
Set it to verbose startup/shutdown messages and see which one it 'hangs' on.. How do you do that?

[CareBear]

Originally posted by LeX
How do you do that? for Win2k: Start/Run gpedit.msc
Under computer configuration go to Administrative Templates / System and set Verbose vs normal status messages to Enabled.

[Bruce]

Originally posted by Wojtek
my profile is 611Mb

May it be because of this?
Is this small/little? My profile is pushing 9 GIGS. :eek:

It still doesn't take more than a minute at most to shutdown though.

[EpidemiK]

How do you find out how big your profile is?

[Wojtek]

c:\documents and settings\yourname
Right click -> properties :)


I found the answer to my problem:
Disable a few 'un-needed' services.
It did the job :)

[EpidemiK]

HOLY!!

It's 2.9 GB!

Mine hangs up at Saving your settings too ..

Edit:

C:\Documents and Settings\EpidemiK\Local Settings\Temp
is taking up 1.5 GB of space .. is it safe to delete everything in there?

[Wojtek]

sure, go ahead

What I did is that I disabled a few services:
system log, system scanner and system stuff that by their name you could tell it makes windows freeze :classic2:

[EpidemiK]

I deleted the whole temp folder and my folder is only 75 MB now, but it still hangs on "Saving your settings .." :mad:

[CareBear]

Originally posted by EpidemiK
I deleted the whole temp folder and my folder is only 75 MB now, but it still hangs on "Saving your settings .." :mad: Did you try my suggestion about verbose status messages?

[EpidemiK]

Originally posted by CareBear
Did you try my suggestion about verbose status messages?

Yeah, but I didn't see anything different .. What is it suppsoed to do?

[KBC]

Hey my profile is 14.6GB...

Bit large, though it doesn't take over a minute to shut down. :biggrin2:

[EpidemiK]

Mine takes 2-3 minutes! ... :(

[Dean]

Whats your puta specs?

[EpidemiK]

It's only 600 MHz .. :o

[CareBear]

Check if in the event viewer (under Start/Programs/Administrative Tools/Event Viewer) under Application Log you have "UserEnv" errors with a description of: "Windows cannot unload your registry file. If you have a roaming profile, your settings are not replicated. Contact your administrator."

If so the problem is caused by Windows not being able to unload a part of the registry hive that contains your registry settings. If it's unable to unload it the first time it will try again for 60 seconds at a rate of once every second. This can happen when a program opens a registry key but doesn't release it nicely when it's shut down.

There are a few solutions and also a couple of work arounds you can try. First of all if you don't have SP3 installed yet go download and install it and see if that fixes the problem. Just choose to "log off" instead of "shut down"/"restart". It will keep the waits to a minimum.
(Don't get too happy if at one point it'll log off instantly because I had that happen too but try it at least three times to be sure).

If you already had SP3 installed or it didn't work check the Add/Remove programs window and see if you have any Pre-SP4 hotfixes installed, specifically look for hotfixes Q328310 and Q329170. Uninstall Q328310 first if it's there and reboot, then uninstall Q329170 and reboot. Now try logging off again and see if it's fixed (this worked for me). You can apply hotfix Q328310 again if you need it (the WM_TIMER causes etc etc) and Q329170 as well (in that order) but on one machine it worked but on the other right after reinstalling Q329170 it "hung" on log off again.

If none of the above worked then try disabling the printer spooler service before logging off (open a command prompt and type: net stop spooler). For a lot of people this made it stop "hanging". If you don't have a printer attached to that computer you can set the service to disabled to prevent it from starting (Control Panel/Administative Tools/Services.. right click the Print Spooler and set it to Disabled).
If you do have a printer you can make a logon/logoff script that will start/stop the service each time you log on/off if you know how to do that, that's the first workaround.

Otherwise Start/Run and then: gpedit.msc to access the Group Policy Editor. Go to Computer Configuration/System/Logon/Maximum retries to unload and update user profile. You can look at the explain tab to see what it's used for. Basically it tells Windows how many times it should retry unloading your part of the registry hive. (One try is one second). Set it to Enable and then 5 tries. Press OK and then close the group policy editor and reboot. I'm not sure if the change happens instantly or not but it should be alright after the next reboot.

One of the things I said should work hopefully.. best of luck :)

[EpidemiK]

Hey, thanks for typing such detailed instructions and helping me out. :D I have tried it and I will post the results the next time I reboot my computer. Thanks! :)

[EpidemiK]

CareBear: Thanks a lot! Now my computer shuts down in the blink of an eye! :D

[CareBear]

Originally posted by EpidemiK
CareBear: Thanks a lot! Now my computer shuts down in the blink of an eye! :D Thank me after you see the bill :p
but you're welcome :)

[LeX]

Originally posted by EpidemiK
CareBear: Thanks a lot! Now my computer shuts down in the blink of an eye! :D So what method(s) did you use for it to work?

[EpidemiK]

Originally posted by LeX
So what method(s) did you use for it to work?
I did all of them but I think it was the printer spooler service that did the trick.

[LeX]

Originally posted by EpidemiK
I did all of them but I think it was the printer spooler service that did the trick. Not meaning to dig up old threads deliberately, but I thought I might share some personal experiences for anybody else who wants to find the solution to the shutdown problem.

If you, like me, simply gave up after seeing carebear's post, fear no more.

It's easier than you might think. All you gotta do is uninstall hotfix Q329170 (some very minor security fix that shouldn't be of concern to most users) and you're shutting down faster than you can write Windows 2000 Professional on paper. ;)

PS... most likely, a warning will appear when you attempt to remove the hotfix, listing programs that it says might not function properly if you continue with the uninstall, but I can assure you, nothing will be affected. In the worst-case scenerio, if a particular program really stops working after uninstalling the hotfix, relax... all you have to do is install it again from windows update, and it should be fixed.

[CareBear]

Originally posted by LeX
If you, like me, simply gave up after seeing carebear's post, fear no more.

It's easier than you might think. All you gotta do is uninstall hotfix Q329170 (some very minor security fix that shouldn't be of concern to most users) and you're shutting down faster than you can write Windows 2000 Professional on paper. ;)*coughs* That's mentioned in my post as well! :p :p

I just included everything since not every fix works for everyone :)

[LeX]

Originally posted by CareBear
*coughs* That's mentioned in my post as well! :p :p

I just included everything since not every fix works for everyone :) Yes, I know it's in your post, but you mentioned about a billion methods that I wan't even willing to try.

I browsed around the net and found a couple of discussions about this little bug, it's even acknowledged by Microsoft (they say they will fix it in the next SP, and if you really want the patch, you have to call them up...). The cause of this problem was narrowed down to hotfix Q329170, and since it worked for me, I thought I would let others know. :)

No need to get rid of your printer spooler or whatever else was mentioned ... :p

[trenzterra]

mine is 809mb and saves settings in 15 sec

[Weapon]

I get this in the event viewer

"Event Type: Warning
Event Source: Userenv
Event Category: None
Event ID: 1517
Date: 29/03/2003
Time: 1:36:32 p.m.
User: NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM
Computer: WEAPON
Description:
Windows saved user WEAPON registry while an application or service was still using the registry during log off. The memory used by the user's registry has not been freed. The registry will be unloaded when it is no longer in use.

This is often caused by services running as a user account, try configuring the services to run in either the LocalService or NetworkService account.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp."

and now my pc takes ages to shut down too, this only started happening last week so I have no idea whats causing it, anyone know? my profile is only like 120mb big