Hi,

Recently, I lost my laptop to a freak accident and was forced to go down to Calgary and get an old desktop of mine which wasn't being used by family of mine, and hence was in storage. I've got it out and am using it, but have noticed two major problems.

1. It doesn't shut down. I tell it to shut down, it does everything it needs to shut down, and then it doesn't. It just sits there with the blue screen up on the monitor telling me it's shutting down forever. I usually end up cutting it's power to turn it off.

2. The computer gets progressively slower on the net the longer I have it on. It groans a ton while I am on the net, like I'm causing it personal harm.

For the shutdown problem.

Open the CMD and type shutdown -s -f -t 0

That should shut it down. If it does then you've got some program that's causing you to hang.

If it doesn't you've got an OS problem.

Sys SPECS?

HP pavilion a640n, using Windows XP (not sure which service pack, one or two) AMD Athlon 64 Processor (3400+), 512 RAM (DDR SDRAM memory). That's what it says on the front of the case, anyways. It's at least six years old at this point, I believe.

I'll try that method of shutting down when I next turn off my computer. Thanks!

That 512MB of memory is probably the cause of your other problem.

Shouldn't that be more than enough to run something as simple as the internet off of a d-link system?

Yah but you said it gets slower the longer it's on.

Which makes sense because more of your memory is being accessed.

give it a full hiigaran'ing. click the speed up computer link in my sig and do what you can. you can easily run XP on 512 megs, especially when you cut down the startup entries and the number of services you use. i run 8 services on mine.

@ Player1, the computer shut down, well, pretty much immediately. I was shocked how quickly. Guess it's a program issue. Thanks for the help!

@ hiigaran, I'm going to have to set aside a weekend for that, lol! This computer did have AVG but it liked auto scanning which totally killed my computers speed.

ahh, if youre responsible and/or careful on the internet, i dont see the reason to have active protection.

quote Mishtram

the computer shut down, well, pretty much immediately. I was shocked how quickly. Guess it's a program issue. Thanks for the help!

NP

But now you gotta find what's causing the problem

Uninstall everything you do not need.

See if that fixes the problem.

If it does not open the task manager and see what you have running.

You may have to disable one thing at a time until it shuts down correctly and it may be more then one thing.

^ Is the only way I know how to solve that problem

Or

You could make a batch file with the shutdown -s -f -t 0 command. Then copy it to your desktop and simply click it when you want to shutdown. Note: The -f forces a shutdown so you will lose any unsaved data.

Or

You could do a clean install of windows.

i will suggest a program which will work wonders for you if you have a lot of stuff to remove. its called the PC Decrapifier. its basically add/remove programs on steroids, cocaine, and god knows what else. simply choose from the list what you want to remove, click next, and it will start uninstalling. take a break, walk around, come back in a few minutes, and youre done.

a clean install of windows is another good route to take, but i would do that as a last resort only, and i doubt you have your license key for that computer anyway.