A question for the IT bods and buffs out there

[Sidspud]

Try just pressing your On/Off button on the system unit and see if there is still a delay.

Just a thought here, but when you click on Turn Off Computer the screen dims to black and white if you leave it long enough. So try updating your video card driver to the latest version, or look on their web site for patches or issues with slow performance.

It may seem totally unrelated, but stranger things have happened. I've replaced a PC power supply to get the function keys on a keyboard to work in the past!

[Nuvo]

@Sidspud, is it case that the logging options are available but it simply doesn't work under XP Home?

[Nuvo]

Try just pressing your On/Off button on the system unit and see if there is still a delay.

Okay just tried that, pressing and holding the power button for 1 sec causes the shutdown options screen to come up after a similar delay time. I change the power option advanced to shutdown to see if that changes anything. If this works, I lose the option to restart options this way though.

UPDATE: Okay, now pressing the power button for 1 sec makes the PC shutwon nice and quick now that the shutdown options are totally bypassed. I can still restart the machine via the "Turn Off" button or the keyboard sleep button albeit with a delay.

I'd still love to know why I have this delay before getting to chosse a shutdown option.

Thanks to all that helped with suggestions and links to try.

Just a thought here, but when you click on Turn Off Computer the screen dims to black and white if you leave it long enough. So try updating your video card driver to the latest version, or look on their web site for patches or issues with slow performance.

Yes it fades to black as you say, I'll have a look at the NVidia site to check for updates and or patches.

It may seem totally unrelated, but stranger things have happened. I've replaced a PC power supply to get the function keys on a keyboard to work in the past!

Don't I know it, I try another spare PSU to see if this helps if the above doesn't. Talking of strange symptoms, I once had a faulty graphics card which caused DVD read error and it could read CD okay. Change the graphics card for an identical item and all is restored. Double weird!

[mcandmar]

@nuvo, by any chance is this the issue where you select start,shutdown and the screen fades to black&white very slowly?

I had that head ache here in college, every machine in a remote site started doing that at once, all HP machines with integrated Intel video cards, make sure they are not set to 24bit colour and download the latest video card driver pack, Intel, Ati, or Nvidia whatever video card you have. I'm 99% sure a recent windows update caused the problem but i had the SUS server setup to auto approve new updates so i dont know which one caused it.

[Nuvo]

@nuvo, by any chance is this the issue where you select start,shutdown and the screen fades to black&white very slowly?

Hi, yes the very same.

I had that head ache here in college, every machine in a remote site started doing that at once, all HP machines with integrated Intel video cards, make sure they are not set to 24bit colour and download the latest video card driver pack, Intel, Ati, or Nvidia whatever video card you have. I'm 99% sure a recent windows update caused the problem but i had the SUS server setup to auto approve new updates so i dont know which one caused it.

The graphics card is a AGP card, the video settings are at 32-bit. I wouldn't at all be surprised if it was a windows update which caused this. My PC receives all updates automatically, it wouldn't be the first time a hotfix has broken something in the past <sigh>.

I'll download the latest NVidia driver to see if this helps any. Thanks.

[Nuvo]

Okay updated the vid driver to no avail. What I did notice is that if you kill the explorer.exe process (the program ocupying the largest memory of 46MB), doing this obviously removes accress to the start menu and task bar.

Next pressing the sleep keyboard button, the shutdown screen appears almost instantly.

So I am wondering if there is a config setting in exlporer.exe to alter its behaviour?
Any ideas?

[Sidspud]

Explorer runs a lot in XP, including your desktop. You can close it down and still run everything through Task Manager, but it is a pain in the a£$e

Theres probably something in the registry that will help, but I'd make damn sure that you have a good backup before you go playing around with it. As I say, Explorer runs a lot of things. Its quite an integral part of the whole operating system.

[SpanishS2Avant]

I had exactly what you have described on a clients pc and found it was the Nview program that runs on the taskbar as a part of the nvidia installation. As soon as i removed this from the startup of the pc it showed the shutdown/restart window instantanously.
The problem with the program was caused by a windows update (not sure which one sorry).

[AUDI9020V]

i konw why you are getting all the problems your using windows buy a mac then you would have no probs,ya ok i run windows but not for long as iam gonna get a power book.