My Computer Takes Forever To Shut Down?

There are several things you can do to increase the "speed" of your computer.

1) Clean up the disk. Uninstall unneeded programs (especially those that run at startup and/or put something in the system tray), run Disk Cleanup, and defragment the drive. This is a good first step that will almost always take a few seconds off boot time and application loads for any computer.

2) Stomp auto-starting programs. Click Start > Run and type "msconfig" at the prompt. Click the Startup tab and look at all that junk that loads when you launch your PC. Do you really need "Adobe Reader Speed Launch"? Probably not. Turn off anything else that looks useless, but be careful not to disable your anti-virus and important system components.

3) Run a full anti-virus and anti-spyware scan. I would recommend using AVG Free Anti-virus, Spybot - Search and Destroy spyware remover and Ad-aware spyware remover. These programs are all free.

4) Clean up the registry. CCleaner, available at http://www.ccleaner.com/ is free and worth running. It will also remove unused files from your system - allowing Windows to run faster and freeing up valuable hard disk space.

Those are the easy and free things you can do. If your computer is still slow you need to move on to the bigger guns.

1) Upgrade RAM. This is the one killer trick that will make almost any computer run faster. With an older PC, you will rarely have enough RAM to run today's memory-hogging operating systems and applications, and adding a high-capacity stick or two of quality RAM will give you a quick speed boost. Adding RAM is fairly simple, even for a novice, and you should be able to do the job in 5 or 10 minutes.You can run a free test at http://www.crucial.com/ and find out what kind of RAM (memory) your computer needs.

2) Reinstall Windows. If the above tricks haven't helped, it may be time to wipe the slate clean and start again, reformatting your hard drive, reinstalling your applications, and restoring your data files from a backup. You'd be surprised how much more responsive a freshly reinstalled Windows system can be, as you've wiped out years of temp files, garbled registry entries, old versions of software programs that have been upgraded repeatedly, and all sorts of other electronic junk. Reinstalling is easy if you have the "recovery disk" that came with your PC, and only a bit more involved if you're using a retail copy of Windows XP. Just be sure you back up everything you want to take with you before you pull the trigger!

3) Upgrade your hard drive. This is a more complicated solution, but if you're reinstalling Windows (per the prior tip) you might consider upgrading to a bigger and possibly faster hard drive, too. Hard disk storage is a performance bottleneck on every machine, and magnetic disks degrade over time. Some performance issues could be caused by a failing hard drive, even, and upgrading to a new model could really put some zip back in your system. As a bonus, you can use the original hard drive for backups or occasional storage, if you put it in an enclosure.

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RE:

My Computer Takes Forever To Shut Down?

hi, my computer over the last week or so has been taking quite sometime to shut down, booting up is normal and about 2-3 minutes.

Before shut down was about 1 minute max, now its about 3-4 minutes. It stays on the "windows is shutting down" screen for most of the time before switching...

The more icons you have in your taskbar is the problem. Each one of those represent a program on standby ready to use. The system has to shut down completely each program before preceeding to the next one and so on.

The same is in reverse, if they are in the "start up" folder on the program list, the system loads each program so it will run before proceeding to the next one.

Some are put there automatically by a program when you install it. What I suggest is, have a look at them and decided what you want to load at the start up and just delete the rest.

Some programs however do not have a listing so you will have to go into the program and take out the tick or whatever

where it says "load this program when starting your computer" or something like that!

I had a similar problem.

Your computer might be taking a long time to shut down because it is trying to close all of the programs you have running.

You probably have a lot of things running that you do not even know about.

Sometimes when you install a new program is automatically is set to begin at startup.

To stop programs for opening at startup (so that they only open when you tell them to) do the following.

Go to Start --->Run ---> type 'msconfig' ---> Startup tab.

Then deselect programs that you do NOT want to run at startup.

I did this and it fixed the problem immediately. (Usually it is only one program causing the problem, but it is best to de-select as many as you don't need).

If you have Vista you can also do this: Start --> Control Panel --> Security ---> Windows Defender --> Tools ---> Software explorer.

Then select the program you don't want running at startup and click "remove" in the bottom right hand corner. It won't uninstall the program, only remove it from the start-up list.

THESE ARE ALL FREE.....

And you can keep them forever....

Advanced WindowsCare V2 Personal

http://www.iobit.com/advancedwindowscare...

CCleaner

http://www.ccleaner.com/

Spybot S&D

>http://www.safer-networking.org/en/%3E

Ad Aware 2007

http://www.lavasoft.com/

Avira AntiVir® PersonalEdition Classic....

http://www.free-av.com/

I've been using them all for over a year now. They are all compatible with each other and Windows XP and Vista.

You will have a trouble free, clean, green, mean machine.

It's possible that there is a adware/spyware that the scan isn't detecting. You could also try deleting the temporary files on the computer, as well as running disk clean-up, then defragmenting the hard drive again.

P.S. You should also check the amount of memory your computer has

I had the same problem once, but a computer guy did mine by adjusting a few settings, I don't know what he did, but it closes down faster than a sports car now.

you prob. have some kind of adware and or spyware that your programs aren't detecting, but i'd start by deleting the temp files, then deleting double files, then defragging your computer is a huuge part of keeping up your computers performance! defrag defrag defrag lol! but with time as more files get dl'd computer get slower cause more files are on there but seriously do a defrag of the whole computer, it takes time but its reallly worth it

Mine takes a little longer than it did at first. I always make a point of keeping everything tidy with Ccleaner. It's one of the best free bits of software out there. If you haven't heard of it get it, it really is good and safely keeps the registry free of useless junk.

Hi there,

In my opinion Ccleaner is the number one tool for cleaning your pc. I've been using it for more then a year now and it works very well. You can grab your free copy here http://j.mp/UrADIO

Check it out.

Good Bye