Refuses to shut down

Do you have any type of automatic backup running?
Joe

No I don't.

Usually when you start the shutdown process the computer waits for various processess to quite on their own. In Windows XP there was a reg key that you can set to a lower time from like 2000 seconds to 200 seconds and it would force a shutdown quicker. I think it was waittokill. You can search the Registry but be VERY CAUTIOUS one false move can mess up the whole system.
Whenever you change something in the registry, just right click and export the file to a location you can easily get to if you have to recover your system.
Like someone suggested above, run this command in the run section shutdown /s /f /t 60. These switches /s is to tell it to shutdown - /f is to force shutdown and /t is the call for time to start the shutdown you can change it to 30 seconds or even 5. Test it and see what happens. Also, you can check your services and see what is running automatically. If you've browsed to any webpages, it's possible something could've been installed without your knowledge. By the time, you can view different processess that are currently running or go to the run command and type taskmgr and see what processess are running. Select Show processess for all users or something like that.
I am not on a Windows 7 machine right now but will try and help you further if you continue to see issues. Also, go to the control panel and select programs and see if there are any newly installed or unusual programs there that you can probably remove to help the hang on shutdown. One more thing, if you don't have a ssd hard drive maybe you need to defrag the system. Hope something helps you out.

Deleted by author. I got it all wrong...

Hi, sorry for late reply been really busy.

I have all my drivers & everything up to date & when i said nothing has changed since before it start to how it is now, i meant that my system was up to date on everything & i haven't installed anything, updated anything or changed anything since as nothing needs to be updated.

Anyways, i do the shutdown from start menu & it fails to shut down. When i left it for about an hour or so i came back & got this screen i have attached below, but doing the shutdown.exe /s /t 0 /f it shut down perfectly fine, so i have no clue what is causing the problem.

I did notice when i do shutdown from start menu i get 1 or 2 instances of waiting for background processes to close or sometimes my trillian before i get the shutting down screen, however doing the shutdown.exe /s /t 0 /f it did not do this & went right to the shutting down screen & then off.

So, this image got me worried because i dont know what is causing it. I know it can't be the GPU because my old GPU the HD5830 must of got heat damage & was causing visual distortions on my screen & flickering in games & on taskbar & browser bars, so my new HD7870 is brand spanking new & literally is less than 2 weeks old.

I tried shutdown /s /f /t 60 in command prompt. A message popped up saying my computer would shut down in one minute. One minute later it did and it still took over a minute to shut down.
Later, I went to defrag the hard drive. It ran some tests but decided it didn't need defragging. I had a program that I installed around the time this problem started. I don't think this is the problem but I uninstalled it. I shut down the computer again and it took over a minute again.

I'm attaching a screenshot of task manager showing running processes. Google Chrome and an app from the Weather Channel are eating up quite a bit of memory. Perhaps one or both of them are why my computer takes forever to shut down?

That is when Chrome is open. When it is not, task manager shows one process from Chrome at around 5,000 KB.

I looked at event viewer and there are two administrative events at the same time I shut down. They are:
User Profile service
Windows detected your registry file is still in use by other applications or services. The file will be unloaded now. The applications or services that hold your registry file may not function properly afterwards.


DETAIL -
1 user registry handles leaked from \Registry\User\S-1-5-21-4196284055-3908763261-3142770655-1001:
Process 2980 (\Device\HarddiskVolume2\Windows\SysWOW64\svchost.exe) has opened key \REGISTRY\USER\S-1-5-21-4196284055-3908763261-3142770655-1001


WLAN AutoConfig
WLAN AutoConfig service has successfully stopped.


Both events occur every time I shut down and there are entries for both dating back to August and September but it's been taking forever to shut down since a week and half ago.

Danny1, stop hijacking other peoples threads. I've got 0 answers to my posts in MY thread & all replies are regarding yours. Go make your damned own!