Dell m1530 not shutting down

I'm having a strange issue that's happened about 3 times already.

Sometimes when I choose shutdown, the computer goes through the shutdown process but restarts right away. This happened twice in a row. I'm not sure if this is related to power settings (High Performance, AC plugged in). Eventually it'll stop but it's kind of annoying because i have to wait until it fully turns off and make sure that it doesn't restart.

Anyone ever have this issue?

 

And you're sure you were selecting the Shutdown option? Just checking.

 

See this link for some tweaks.. it some about making your shutdown time quicker

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=166532

 

I have had this same problem, but only after I've been playing games, when my laptop is pretty hot. Still don't know why though, maybe the heat is just a coincidence

 

I just switched from Vista to XP Pro and now have this long shut-down/log-off problem. Tried changing the WaitToKillServiceTimeout value from 20000 to 5000 (as described in the tweaks link above), made no difference. Any ideas?
I'd hate to have to admit defeat and go back to Vista, but up to 15 mins to shutdown is a real pain in the you-know-what!
Cheers

 

Gave up and reinstalled Vista - **sigh**. At least I've got it looking like xp and have stopped the annoying 'helpful' animations etc like the moving folder list in windows explorer!
In case anyone's looking for help tweaking Vista, I found this site useful:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=474

 

I used to have the exact same problem when I first received my m1530. It annoyed the hell out of me because I used to travel every week for work and I would shut down the lappy, put it away, then fire it up on the plane later to find I only had like 60% battery because it restarted by itself. A couple of months ago I received a bios update through the Dell support center and it hasn't happened since then. I don't know if it was coincidence or what but check and see if you have the latest bios installed.

 

Typically the problem is due to updated drivers/incomplete installations that mess up with your processes and startup entries. Like if you install incompatible software, drivers, or that which affects the filesystem like a virtual drive, you may get this kind of a problem where the computer does not shut down because its tricked into thinking that it shouldnt shut down since a process is running with the hard drive or is expecting something.

The best thing to do if it happened only recently after you installing some software, or drivers, that might have been incompatible, or may be unstable... the best thing to do is to uninstall it and go to msconfig and be sure to disable any processes that may be related to it, or even unrelated that you don't know of as well as kill any processes that are running.

If after doing the above, you still cant shut down, then just hold down your power button to force shutdown so that it may not happen again.

Another possible cause is due to hibernating/sleeping the computer a lot. Sometimes incompatible software/drivers may get confused due to sleeping and hibernating the computer a lot which is due to usually a flaw in the drivers/incompatibility reasons. Though it is very rare.

Hope that helps.

 

Thanks Chaz, Forte,
I thought about updating the BIOS but found several disturbing threads online about Dell BIOS 'up'grades, one of which even prevented the battery from recharging! So I decided to leave the BIOS alone since it worked fine before moving to XP. As for software causing it, I think it was, but the laptop stopped shutting down properly as soon as I installed XP, and forced shutdowns didn't help it iron out any issues. Also, I hardly ever hibernate it, but it did restart itself a couple of times by itself! Giveaway blue pwr led peeking out of the case whispering 'BATTERY DYING!!!!!'.
Anyhoo, Vista (choke) back on, lappy shutsdown fine, stopped the majority of annoying help, and all I have to put up with is Explorer (IE and Windows) crashing routinely! My fingers are getting sore with being crossed so hard in the hope Win7 will be progress and Vista can die the death it sorely deserves!
Overly optimistic? We'll see........