Vista can't shut down

My computer can never shut down. After I try to shut down Vista, the computer gets stuck on the screen that says "Shutting Down..." and it dies after battery runs out. Anyone know what I can do about this?

 

I would just reinstall vista, or better yet, install XP, because this isn't worth the effort of troubleshooting since there could be a number of causes.

 

Run vista in diagnostic or safe mode and then try to shut down....If you don't face the same problem, it could be a service that might not be getting killed..!!
Also do a registry scan with CCleaner....
And in regedit, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/ SYSTEM/ CurrentControlSet/ Control/ WaitToKillServiceTimeout, check the value by Right-clicking on it - then click Modify....

 

Ok, I did a scan/cleaning thing with CCleaner, didn't do much. The computer only freezes on the Shutting Down screen after I play games for a few hours. If I just turn on my computer, surf the internet or watch a movie, then it will shut down no problem...

 

You can update the drivers for the GPU, by uninstalling them first and then installing the new ones....

 

Is this a recent activity or was this experienced right after you bought your laptop?

 

I would certainly stay with Vista and figure out what the issue might be and correct it.

Have you looked in the Event Viewer? Clear the event logs (so you have less to look at), try to shut down, wait awhile, but not until the battery dies - pop it out and when Windows restarts tell it to start Windows normally, then go in and look at the Event Logs for smoking guns.

Copy the bat/cmd file shown in this thread, save it and run it to clear the event logs. Do not worry about any errors - there may be logs listed in there to clear that do not exist on your machine.

 

Which is the most recent driver for my card?

Just started a few days ago. It has been fine for the past year, and I have done some heavy gaming too, and nothing went wrong.

Will try that out, thanks.