Why can't Windows shut down promptly?
Back in the old days when TVs and radios had tubes, it took a couple of minutes for a set to warm up before you could watch or listen. But even then, you could turn it off instantly. That's not true with Windows PCs. Not only does it sometimes take seemingly forever for them to boot, but it can take several minutes for one to shut down. Even worse, if a program stops responding, you may or may not be able to shut it down. And even if it does terminate, it may take awhile.
And by the way, I'm not just talking about Windows XP and Vista. I'm having the same problem with Windows 7, though, to be fair, the new operating system is still in beta so it's possible that Microsoft could amaze and delight me by fixing this in the final version.
I can understand why it takes at least some time for a PC to boot from a power-off situation because the operating system and some software and drivers have to be copied from storage into memory. But I can't understand why it takes more than a few seconds for the computer or one of its applications to shut down. I realize that sometimes there is a bit of housekeeping to do in the form of closing files but--give me a break--should that really have to take up to five minutes? And there have been countless times in my experience when it simply never shuts down, forcing me to hold the power button for several seconds. I've even had laptops that were so stubborn that I had to remove the battery to turn them off.
I'm particularly annoyed at how Windows often fails to terminate programs that have crashed. In theory, pressing Ctrl Alt and Delete to bring up the Task Manager followed by clicking End Task should simply stop the program and return you to the operating system. But that doesn't always work. Sometimes the program just hangs there forever, sometimes it quits after a random period of time and sometimes the entire computer just crashes. Imagine if you had a lamp in your house that was malfunctioning and the only way to turn it off was to turn off all the power to your house from the main breaker.
I haven't raised this particular issue with people at Microsoft, but a couple of years ago- when I was researching a story for The New York Times on technology energy hogs, the standard response from folks in Redmond was to blame third party applications and drivers for the fact that Windows machines often fail to properly go to or wake up from from sleep mode. Third party applications may very well be to blame, but it's no excuse. One of Windows strongest selling points is its ability to work with software and hardware from thousands of sources so it seems to me that a company with the resources and experience of Microsoft should have by now figured out how to handle errant programs and drivers.
I do like many of the improvements in Windows 7 and appreciate that it boots a little faster and--at least on my machine--seems better at going to sleep and waking up. Now all I want is the ability to turn off the darn machine and terminate a misbehaving program without having to dedicate my entire afternoon to the task.
Larry Magid is a technology journalist and an Internet safety advocate. He's been writing and speaking about Internet safety since he wrote Internet safety guide "Child Safety on the Information Highway" in 1994. He is co-director of ConnectSafely.org, founder of SafeKids.com and SafeTeens.com, and a board member of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. Larry's technology analysis and commentary can be heard on CBS News and CBS affiliates, and read on CBSNews.com. He also writes a personal-tech column for the San Jose Mercury News. You can e-mail Larry or follow him on Twitter @larrymagid. 
This is for XP. Go to Run and enter regedit then:
Under HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop, change the values for WaitToKillAppTimeout and HungAppTimeout to 1000 or 2000 (this is the wait time in milliseconds).
Under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop, change the values for WaitToKillAppTimeout and HungAppTimeout to 1000 or 2000.
Under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control, change the value for WaitToKillAppTimeout to 1000 or 2000.
Use the same value for all three settings.
I've seen many programs that consistently take over 15 seconds to shutdown on my work ThinkPad.
Microsoft set these values to 30 seconds or more for the very reason Larry wrote this article -- it simply takes an inordinately long time for Windows to manage shutdown. Setting these values to 1 or 2 seconds risks bit rot.
Is that applicable in Vista as well? I ask because on my machine there is no WaitToKillAppTimeout or HungAppTimeout keys in HKEY_USERS or HKEY_CURRENT_USER.. could only find WaitToKill in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE.
Try something simpler like a batch file containing one (fairly) simple statement shutdown -s -t 00
I use this all the time with my errant media center as it used to constantly hang at end task screen..obviously using different flags to shut it down remotely.
Throw that in to an icon on your desktop, throw a hotkey combination on to that shortcut, and you've got quite a quick way to shut down your pc.
Of course I also handle the best practices of closing my own stuff before I shut down a machine. If it's a resident app in my system tray that can't shut down properly, it deserves being forced, and if it corrups, it deserves being uninstalled.
@sanenazok Pressing the off-button for 5 seconds might force the machine to shut down in most cases, but not always. I have had situations where I kept the button pressed in for as long as 30 seconds and the thing still didn't die. The only way to shut it down was indeed by disconnecting the power and taking the battery out. While this happened to me several times on older systems, it only happened to me only once on XP, but several times on Vista, already.
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I am sorry, but I have to call BS on this one. What type of computer or laptop are you using? THE EXACT MODEL please, because I have NEVER seen a laptop that after holding the power button for the specified amount of time to do a 'hard shutdown' that it doesn't actually shut down.
N E V E R! My one friend told me that.... I found out what his problem was: he wasn't holding the button long enough. He was holding for 5 seconds, when the instruction manual said 15 for a hard shutdown. I held it for 15 seconds.... sure enough, it shut down.
Felt like putting a mark stating "LOSER!" on his forehead for not reading the manual.
Sorry I didn't come back and see your post till now. This is only for Windows XP. Please note that I have not personally done this. I've mostly had trouble on my work PCs either taking a long time or seeming to ignore the command altogether. But maybe we should listen to what Alphaman63 had to say, and play it safe.
Of course it would be NICE if I didn't have to force a shutdown AT ALL, but that's Redmond for you.
even though other OSs can shutdown faster...
The thing that chaps my shorts about Windows shutdowns is when you walk away after two or three minutes thinking that it's done (hey, life outside of Windows does happen) only to find out later that the system winds up sitting at a prompt due to a hung program. Usually it's an "End now?" prompt. My response is usually "No duh, Sherlock -- that's why I told you to shut down in the first place!" followed by idle threats to take the PC to a tall bridge and give it a long drop with a sudden stop...
His point is that OSX shuts down faster and with less hassles
than Windows does and it's been my experience as well
as far as your third party rants I have still not found n e app that has mis-functioned on OSX and beleive me I've installed and deleted 100s of them Kind of why I like OSX so much
no registry to deal with watsoever and the 90% of 3rd party apps aren't crappy and can be removed easily or in rare case via app zaper the ease of use is just that much better !
Windows may have more software but this also includes a lot of poorly written crapware making matters worse !
another scenario
try to sleep wake on a 12 month old Vista install with Heavy usage
it takes forever most of the time or my personal favorite A freeze
Kind of why I hate Windows so much it just doesn't work the way I want it too it requires too much maintenance to work efficiently with
Anyway, OS X does not have a registry. You are 100% correct. It does have a central registry like database of configuration information (seriously, go to terminal and type 'defaults'). It uses XML as its schema but conceptually its the same thing as the registry and its used in the very very same way. There are also persistant configuration options in sysctl. Different class of data though.
Also you've never found an app that didn't function correctly under OS X? What sort of magical treasure trove of bug free software have you stumbled across! Tell us!
As for the waking from a sleep on a heavily used vista box. Well, if I try to wake mine from sleep it usually takes around 3 seconds (yes, I have macs and pcs! I know, its madness). If I try to wake from hibernate it takes longer - just like it does on a mac. Maybe you screwed up your PC?
p.s. another reason i hate rebooting my mac: it constantly wants me to update itunes and quicktime. I dont use those at work apple, I don't want them running or updating at all.
"I have still not found n e app that has mis-functioned on OSX"
Clearly your are not trying hard enough. My computer neophite wife can bring OS X to it's knees.
You can exclude updates you know, so it will stop asking you to update them. Although what's the harm in updating them?
Other recommendations, open MSCONFIG (Win key + R) > type MSCONFIG > go to the 'Startup' tab and uncheck any unnecessary applications that might be starting up with the system. Windows 7 will further improve this with features such as on demand loading of device drivers and services. You might want to go to blackviper website and check through a list of unnecessary services that start with Windows.
Also, do some common clean up chores such as running a disk clean up, remove system restore points except the last one, remove temporary files, cached thumbnails. There are a lot of things you can do to make Windows fast and efficient over time. Again, I have not experienced the instant shutdown issues you have on Vista and Windows 7 beta.
Ya know how I turn off computers? Hold down the power button until it shuts off. If that does not work I unplug it. Since 1990, I have had two HD's fail and have never had to reinstall an OS or software. One was a 400 mhz Sony laptop that survived 6 months after I threw it across a parking lot landing on one corner and the other fail was a 17 MacBook Pro failed on the 365 day I owned it (yes Apple took care of it) .
That we even have this issue is stupid, imagine if it was a car that took 5 minutes to shut down or sometimes didn't turn off ?(I supposed this has happened to someone once)
I'm certainly glad I'm not paid to publish any whim that pops up in my mind during the day, like you are. Then I could very well find my self reading such mindless dribble - written by me. Good, grief.
Just leave the thinking to the pro's. That you don't know how, or want to do techy lame things doesn't change that all operating systems have the same issues to solve and amazingly have a lot of techy lame thing ways to do it.
You aren't techy lame thing free in any OS. Just ignorant of what it is.
That is why that some of the net books have an instant on feature, that does not even load the WINDOZE OS, so the user can get e-mail and web browse without all that WINDOZE crap. With todays technology the PC does not need an OS or a HD for that matter, it can all be on a USB stick, including all your personal files. Just plug it into any PC, Laptop, Notebook and you have your own personalized set-up and files on any unit that you can access.
But you "the customer/consumer??" is not going to see that. Why? It benefits the consumer, but does not benefit MS who is its biggest opponent, so they can sell you more crap sucker.
GLAD U HAVE NO PROBLEMO WITH WINDOWS I'M SICK OF HEARING THE LIKES OF YOU DEFEND A FLAWED PRODUCT BECAUSE YOU ARE IGNORANT OF ANY OTHER OPERATING SYSTEMS.
Just a helpful note for future commenting.
Looking under the hood however, reveals that DOS 7 is involved with the same CONFIG.SYS issues, although it's in CONFIG.NT and .SYS drivers as DOS 6.22. It hasn't changed much. My BIOS is circa 2003 and I have an extensive power management options on my Compaq 2878CL Laptop than normally found in today's systems. So the firmware knows when to hibernate or power off when I hold down the power key for a 4 seconds. It's really a firmware / software issue. I've been through Win 2000, Win NT, and now Win XP on here. It takes sbout the same time to reload out of hibernate as it does boot. It seems like the slowest part of the system is still the HD as it's always busy even though the memory is maxed out.
I once made the mistake of just closing the lid on the laptop and putting it into my laptop bag while boarding a flight, but the darn thing remained on through the flight, and when I removed it from the bag, the laptop was red hot like it was on fire (probably because the bag blocked the fan vent), I felt like I burned my hand touching it, and the battery was just about drained. I figured that incident probably cut the life of the laptop in half with it being so hot.
I've been much happier with a MacBook Pro since.
"Did you ever think about just shutting the lid?"
LOL -- you /did/ read the comment, didn't you?? No, I suppose not.... ;)
Anyway, you are right. I did miss that and in retrospect it was a bad suggestion. I've done the same thing with my MBP and ended up with a drained laptop at the end by the end of the flight.
I've been using Windows (in various flavors) for a LONG time. I have experienced the same issue off and on, usually after installing a new piece of software or new/updated hardware drivers (or after a test run of programs I'm developing, sometimes I can write some screwey stuff) or when a minimized process attempts to presents a confirmation dialogue that ends up hidden. I've had the same problem occur occasionally in Linux, and seen it occur in Mac's. Never had the problem occur in DOS though. Maybe we should all go back to DOS?
Thanks for the self-acknowledged bad suggestion. What were you thinking?
Perhaps you were thinking about Apple's laptops because, by the way, If you really do shut the lid on an MBP then the machine goes to sleep. It doesn't heat up; if anything it'll cool down. And it starts up again immediately when you open it up. Conversely, I've done this enough times with a windows laptop to realize that this is a bad idea
The whole reason for the article (for the complaint that shutting down takes a long time) is because the author has a point of comparison between a Windows and an Apple experience. If Apple wasn't any better then the article would be a non-starter. While it may be a trivial article, it does at least have the benefit of being true.
Actually, the times I've had the problem with the battery draining on my laptop was with a 12" powerbook and a 15" MBP. The windows laptops I've used usually have been a bit better about that. That just my experience though and if I've learned anything its that a person's experiences with their computing equipment tend to be intensely variable. Some people have had nothing but good experiences with their laptops (of any maker or OS) and other people have had nothing but pain (a friend had t have his MBP logic board replaced 3 times. I had to have the logic board on my 12" replaced once (bad drive controller) and I had a dell that needed it replaced once (bad keyboard controller) as well).
So I think my issue with the article is that while this experience may be true for the author and for some other people its not true across the board. My experience, which I tend to think is as valid as anyone else's, has been fundamentally different. It may be because I use my devices differently. It may be because I've just had better luck.
My apologies for calling you kid. Its just been my experience that the people who make that sort of pun are more chronologically challenged. A poor assumption on my part.
Not a bad comment at all. Shutting down the lid normally put's it into sleep mode. It will do that fairly quickly. It's only when there is a problem or something else (like a system hanging in shut down) that it won't go to sleep and create the problems that the OP encountered.
One one laptop I bought (my bad) the prior owner had knocked off the little plastic bump that told the laptop the lid was closed and to go to sleep. It took awhile to figure out the problem.
And what about the times when, like I've personally experienced, Windows just hangs on its own, programs locked up that come with Windows.
Actually, the fastest shut down I've ever had with Windows came from an automatic shutdown through a third party app. SmartDefrag cut the shut down time in half after it ran a defrag.
Of course, since other Windows programs took just as much extra time to do the same tasks, it's not surprising that shut down took that long as well.
I've had OS X apps hang as well. Spinning beachball of death (or hypnodoom wheel if you prefer) happens with some regularity requiring a kill -9. Assuming the system isn't so wedged (usually because safari has decide my swap space is its own personal playground) I can actually bring up a terminal window. Very few OSes are immune to this soprt of thing and none of the mainstream ones are.
on the contrary to wat you say
me and most of the other users seem to have more issues with Windows especially when dealing with Shutdowns and sleep wake
and almost zero issues on OSX . Majority Wins I guess
So stop trying to say that All OS'es r equal !
also Linux works more efficiently in this regard again I say this from experience
maybe you need to run disk permissions or something or you seriously have some critical problems with your OSX install !
I have 3 IMAP accounts with lots of folders in them. When I try to shut down OS X, I am more often than not stopped by a hanging Mail application (the one that is part of Mac OS X). This is quite rational behaviour for Mail, because it knows it hasn't synchronized all the folders.
If I regularly, manually sync my 3 accounts, Mail usually terminates normally.
You didn't reply to my comment, you just went off about OS X doing the same thing.
In fact, I made a response to your comment with a valid point against you.
You blamed a slow startup/shutdown with Windows on 3rd party apps, I brought up the point that Windows has had slow startup/shutdown with no 3rd party apps, just the ones provided by MS.
Please actually respond to my comment when you use my name.
When I said OS X apps I was referring to apps that came with the OS (particularly safari when it tries to do a graceful close). My apologies for not being entirely clear. Mostly what I was trying to get at was that this sort of thing isn't limited to Windows and its often seems to be pretty variable. I'm not trying to say that Windows is a great OS - far from it. More that pretty much all operating systems suck - they all just suck in different ways.
sorry, Larry, i didn't like this article. Windows works wonderfully for me. if it's not working for you, you're doing something horribly wrong. i use no special configurations or tweaks other than turning off my page file, and i perform almost no maintenance, save a HD defrag once every year or two. i have a couple Macs and a couple Linux boxes at home and i have to say, Windows blows both of them away for everyday tasks and ease of use. although i will say Linux can be pretty good when you are using it solely for a specialized purpose.
It may be necessary to right mouse-click on some of these programs in the tray (lower right-hand corner).
I have found the easiest way to disable these programs from running at boot is Windows Defender >Tools >Software Explorer >Category Software Explorer and disable unneccessary items from starting at boot. (Microsoft items are usually necessary, as is your anti-virus program).
Do all what? he just said to go in Windows Defender and then open the software menu. I really don't see what's so hard about that. Though, if that's to hard for you, I guess its good you jumped ship. In my experience its 3 times harder to do half the stuff on a mac then it is on a windows machine. Not including the huge quantity of programs that are Windows only.
On the other hand, Linux is a much better solution compared to having to pay huge sums of money for apple junk. (I have yet to find an apple system that was cheaper then a more powerful PC) Though you still run into the same problem with Linux, you have to RTFM. That and the software support isn't really there either.
http://news.cnet.com/earth-hour-save-a-watt-and-maybe-the-earth/
You seriousally didn't just make that comment.
WinXP is fairly alright with shutdowns.
Most of the time, the reason it takes so long to shutdown is due to so many programs that do logging.
Disable any and every form of logging you can, you won't need it unless you actually use them.
Another is programs programs that manage large files or large groups of files before shutdown, just outright terminate them, browsers especially.
I believe there is also some stupid setting in Windows that tells it to unload drivers on shutdown, but i forgot whereabouts that is and how to disable it. (could be found with a Google easily enough)
But generally, i never shutdown anyway, i always hibernate whenever i am moving anything anywhere.
In fact, shutting down is probably the worst thing to do, i used to suffer slower speeds and crashes more often, now i never get this.
Usually after a day of use, Windows just seems to get to this sweet spot where it runs great. (kinda sad, really)
~ Hibernate, it might just save your life. ~
And those looking for a new computer, might want to look at the new Mac mini. It uses <13W at idle.
With a toaster oven, you can easily handle bagels and use it as a mini-oven (pizzas, roasting nuts, baking a potato, broiling fish, melting cheese on a variety of comestibles, etc.). A plain old one-or-two slice toast has limited functionality.
But you're right, toasters are wonderfully gratifying, so much so than balky personal computers.
Great for pizza snacks, reheating pizza, making personal pan pizzas, bagel pizzas, bread pizza, or toast ^_^
If you want an app to close *right now*, the fastest way to do it is to pull up the Task Manager, right-click on the app in question, and click "go to process". Then right-click on the process and terminate it that way.
If you do it that way, Windows won't ask nicely first and wait, which is really what the delay is all about. If the app is frozen, asking nicely won't do any good, but Windows will try anyway.
- by NiGHTS4EVA March 28, 2009 2:12 PM PDT
- he probably has like 100 icons on his desktop =p
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- by gefitz March 29, 2009 6:24 PM PDT
- Word.
- Like this
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- by linuxgeek90 March 30, 2009 10:44 AM PDT
- Like, why should it matter?
- Like this
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Showing 1 of 8 pages (275 Comments)'Oh, he probably has a wallpaperz of molasses. LOLz no wonder itz so slow'
Srsly, there is no reason for windows to slow down just because of icons.