Chapter 3. Startup and Shutdown Issues

What You’ll Learn

In this section, I’ll teach you:

• How to figure out why your system starts up so slowly

• How to check to ensure you have the right hardware for a zippy startup

• What hardware components affect startup

• Why a super-fast hardware system might still drag its butt

• Why over time your system will get slower on startup

• How to turbo charge your startup routine

• How to repair startup problems that ruin your everyday computing experience

• How to avoid slow shutdowns or shutdowns that hang

• How to troubleshoot your shutdown

One of the biggest complaints heard from long-suffering Windows users is the long, ponderous startup times you get when you first boot Windows. Getting a computer switched from its off mode to up and running in a usable state is like getting a teen out of bed before lunchtime. With both tasks, you’ll suffer a lack of patience, irritation, and a lot of high-pitched yelling.

The good news is that Windows Vista starts up faster than ever—well, at least when it is first installed. Sadly, Vista won’t do much for your teenager’s sleep habits.

Shutdown has long been a problem for Windows users as well. One badly configured driver or setting, and Windows refuses to go into a sleep or wait state or even full shutdown. There are a lot of apparently pointless activity, false starts, and sometimes annoying messages and prompts before you get a full shutdown. It’s like getting a three-year-old off to bed—though, in that case, the pointless behavior manifests as meandering outside the bedroom door, inane questions (“Why do cats like fish?”), and other delaying tactics before you get full shutdown for the night.

Slow startup times on any Windows machine, including Vista, are a result of one of two situations. Later in this chapter, I will show you an absolutely foolproof method for turbo charging your system so that Vista is optimized to start up as quickly as it is capable. But first, let’s look at some things you should consider before you try my startup fixes.

Not Enough Memory or Hardware Resources

Drag a trailer full of camels (maybe you are a zookeeper) with an aging Chevy Chevette, and you will have a different experience than if you try the same camel-shipping task with a Ford Bronco. If your computer is of an older vintage and you managed to install Vista, everything is going to be slow anyway, especially startup.

So, if your computer is the equivalent of a Chevy Chevette, you might be able to tweak it so it performs better, but in the end it’s not designed for Vista’s camel-like size and humpiness. Drag a camel, and it will spit. Same goes for Vista.

So, here are the basic hardware specs that Microsoft suggests for what it calls Vista-capable:

• A modern processor of at least 800MHz—such as a Pentium III

• 512MB of system memory

• A graphics processor that is DirectX 9 capable

For what Microsoft calls a Vista Premium experience (which includes the ability to use the new swanky Aero interface), your system must have the following features:

• 1GHz 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor

• 1GB of system memory

• Support for DirectX 9 graphics with a WDDM driver, 128MB of graphics memory (minimum), Pixel Shader 2.0, and 32 bits per pixel

• 40GB of hard drive capacity with 15GB of free space

• DVD-ROM drive

• Audio output capability

• Internet access capability

My advice is to double the Premium specifications for a Vista experience that won’t drive you mad and will have reasonably sane boot times.

If you want to know what part of the system is its Achilles heel, use the Windows Experience Index tool, which is new to Vista:

1. Click the Windows button and type Performance in the Search box.

2. Inside the Start menu, click Performance Information and Tools when it appears.

3. Your System’s Windows Experience Index appears. Ignore it and look at the subscores.

The subscore numbers (see Figure 3.1) don’t count as anything tangible, so don’t think that your graphics system has 5.9 MIPS, GHz, ferrets, or anything else. They are purely a reference measure used to compare against an index that software makers will be putting on some of their products. This helps you figure out whether you’ll have a miserable time running something like Microsoft Flight Simulator X or a super, fun, happy time.

Figure 3.1. The lowest subscore shows which component is holding back your system’s performance. In this case, it’s RAM.

The lowest subscore shows the piece of your system that is holding it back. Table 3.1 shows how those bits affect boot times.

Table 3.1. Subscores and Boot Times

The bottom line is a faster hard drive and processor help speed boot times. Adding more memory to 2GB should give your system ample memory to execute a speedy startup. A faster graphics processor might speed up your system’s boot time.

The memory is holding back this Dell system on overall performance. Because it has 1GB of RAM, an upgrade to 2GB might help startup time somewhat. Even if bumping up your total RAM doesn’t speed boot time all that much, it will help overall system performance after the system is booted.

Weasely Software That Loads on Startup

Discussing boot times leads to a discussion of what software loads on startup. The quick answer is three categories of software, as follows:

• Windows system files load at startup—Not much you can do about these, as without them, Vista won’t run.

• System services also run at startup—These can actually be subdivided into two types themselves: Windows services and third-party services.

• Startup items—These are typically third-party applications such as QuickTime, iTunes, and Real Player, as well as your antivirus program.

The last two items can be tweaked, removed, and suppressed in a fun and rewarding troubleshooting process that I am about to show you using a hidden Windows application called System Configuration.

You can start it as follows:

1. Click the Windows button; then type msconfig and press Enter.

2. Click Continue on the usual UAC dialog. Try not to be annoyed for the hundredth time today.

3. The System Configuration dialog opens (see Figure 3.2).

Figure 3.2. The System Configuration utility is a troubleshooter’s best friend. Microsoft has improved it in Windows Vista.

Prepare to be surprised and mystified if this is the first time you have seen this applet because it can do some seemingly magical things and is a Windows troubleshooter’s best friend.

Why You Will Love System Configuration

There are lots of reasons to love msconfig, primarily because it can be used to pare down the startup process and make this part of your computer as lean as possible.

Besides a better startup, working with msconfig also makes your system run more smoothly overall because less deadwood loads into memory, which can drag the system down during every use.

Because I am sure you want immediate gratification, let me show you how to speed up your boot time by up to 50% right now so that you can say nice things about me and my book to your spouse and/or lovemonkey during pillow talk tonight.

Vista Startup Quick Fix

Here are some quickie steps to instant Vista startup happiness:

1. First, grab a stopwatch or timer that counts in seconds. Close all running applications. Then restart your computer and time how long it takes for the system to reboot and to return to the Windows desktop; you will have to click your user account and enter a password if that is the usual practice during startup. Stop the clock when everything finishes loading and you are looking at a ready desktop and your pointer is no longer an hourglass. Make a note of the time.

2. Next, go back into System Configuration (use msconfig again), and click the Startup tab (see Figure 3.3).

Figure 3.3. All the checked items in the Startup tab load into memory and bog down your system startup.

The System Configuration utility is a troubleshooter’s best friend—and the good news is that Microsoft has improved it in Windows Vista.

3. Look at the really big list of applications with check marks next to them. These run each time your system starts up.

4. Click the Disable All button so that all the Startup Items are unchecked (see Figure 3.4).

Figure 3.4. Uncheck all items in the Startup tab and prepare to experience the fastest system start you have ever seen!

5. Now click OK, start your timer again, and restart the system. Log on as a user as before to allow Windows to boot.

6. Watch how fast Windows comes up this time.

Depending on how cumbersome your startup routine has been, you should see between a 50% and 100% improvement in boot-up time. Of course, you have turned off everything during this process, so that is not particularly practical.

This also probably turned off must-have programs such as antivirus systems, as well as other favorite applications (such as your chat programs), and that may not be appealing. So, if this extreme method doesn’t suit you, the next section details a more advanced method to customize your Vista startup.

How to Tweak the Vista Startup to Your Liking

Go back to the System Configuration dialog box and click the Startup tab again. All your startup applications will be turned off from the last test. It’s time to figure out which ones you really need and which ones are optional.

There will be some obvious applications that you will want to immediately turn back on:

• Antivirus

• Windows Defender (Microsoft’s built-in antispyware program) and any third-party antispyware products

• Any application that you really can’t live without, such as your romping kittens screensaver

Be mercenary in this process (pay attention, kitten-lovers) because not only do these applications slow down your startup, but they also plant their furry bums into your precious memory during everyday computing. So if you have a bare-bones system that seems to drag all the time, dumping unnecessary applications in system memory will open up memory space and make it available for important tasks, and ultimately make your system quicker and more responsive.

Go through each item and determine what it does. It’s easy to do this, although it can be a bit time consuming. Still, there’s a big payoff at the end of it. Here’s how:

Look for the Command column in the Startup tab, and click and drag with your mouse the vertical bar to the right of the word “Command” to expose the items listed (see Figure 3.5).

Figure 3.5. Expand the Command column to see where a startup app is launching from and what the executable file is called. This will give you hints as to what it is.

Let’s take an item shown in Figure 3.5:

Skype        "C:Program FilesSkypePhoneSkype.exe" /nosplash
/minimized

As you can see, this is Skype, the voice over IP program used to make phone calls on the Internet. The info under the Command column tells us where it is located and what the actual executable file is called. It can also include switches (such as /nosplash) to customize how it launches. It is fairly easy to identify.

Let’s look at a more difficult entry:

LXCJCATS    rundll32 C:Windowssystem32spoolDRIVERSW32X86
lxcjtime.dll

This one is harder to figure out, but when I Googled it, I found a hint. It’s probably a Lexmark driver or applet. The giveaway is the spool folder, which indicates a printer driver or related applet.

A great resource to help you with this is a website owned by software publisher Uniblue called Process Library, available at ProcessLibrary.com (see Figure 3.6). These guys catalog a majority of the weird processes that can be located either in memory or in the startup area and reveal what they are for and whether they are necessary, dispensable, or a threat.

Figure 3.6. If you don’t know what that odd program in Vista’s startup area is, punch it into ProcessLibrary.com. The handy site explains what the program is and whether it can be removed.

Stopping Viruses and Spyware

You can categorize the applications in startup into four types:

• Must haves

• Handy to haves

• Don’t really need

• What the heck is that doing there?

The first three are self explanatory, but the fourth can be interesting.

The Windows startup area is a good place for virus writers and spyware creators to load their nasty malware, because it ensures that their handiwork runs every time you reboot your computer.

If you see something in the list you can’t identity or that looks oddly named (maybe random letters and numbers) or cheekily named—say BigBottomsXXX.exe—there is a good chance your system is infected with something unsavory.

Use ProcessLibrary.com (or the aforementioned Start_ups.exe) again to investigate these entries. If they prove to be malware, disable them so they can do no further harm to your system.

Memory Hogging Applets You Can Switch Off

The other applications that you can disable in the Startup tab of System Configuration are just run-of-the-mill nuisances.

To ensure the survival and an ongoing toehold in your system, many software publishers will insert a part of their applications into the startup routines when you install their programs. This allows their software to check for updates automatically or launch faster (see Figure 3.7). But that means they squat in memory all the time, and as a consequence, they take up much-needed resources. If you’re a parent with a 30-year-old son who pillages the fridge and lives in your basement, these applets are the digital version of him.

Figure 3.7. Look what’s squatting in your startup and hogging your memory.

Classic startup oafs include the following:

• RealPlayer

• iTunes

• QuickTime

• MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, AOL Instant Messenger, and so on

Of course, there are loads more. These are just a few of the famous ones.

Unless you live for these applications and you feel it’s critical that they sit in memory all the time, disable them. Better wait the extra few seconds when you run them each time than have them eat up system resources all the time.

Root Out Even More Memory Hogs

I hope you’re feeling satisfied after that exercise. It’s one of my favorite things to do on my computer. Afterwards, I always feel like my computer has a new lease on life.

Before we wrap up this discussion, let me give you a few more tips on how to further tune startup. There is a second list of potential memory hogs that you can inspect and pare down your startup even further.

Open System Configuration again by running msconfig. This time, click the Services tab. This is where Vista keeps track of system services that can be critical to Vista operation. Windows services provide functionality to Vista and its user accounts regardless of whether you (or anyone) are logged in to your computer.

Under the Services tab, you’ll see lots of Vista services, including services provided by your third-party security software, such as a software firewall or antispyware program (see Figure 3.8). You might find some other interlopers here as well.

Figure 3.8. Pare down unneeded third-party services in the Services tab of System Configuration. Start by clicking Hide All Microsoft Services.

Click the Hide All Microsoft Services box to filter out critical Vista elements and then review what’s left. You might be able to turn off services belonging to a long-removed application that got left behind after, perhaps, a botched uninstall or other abandoned applications.

Tips for the Advanced, Brazen, and Stupid

You might also fantasize about turning off some Microsoft services in the Services tab. Some geeks consider some of them unnecessary. Some bold geeks have even experimented with turning off all of them in XP with interesting results. Microsoft said you can’t. They demonstrated that you can.

For example, if you don’t use a printer, do you really need the Print Spooler service turned on?

If you don’t use IPv6 (the next-generation Internet communications standard), do you really need IP Helper turned on and taking up memory?

If you hate the new Search feature in Vista (if so, maybe you’re insane), you can turn off the indexing Windows Search. If you want to take care of Windows Updates yourself, you could turn off Windows Update.

The reality is these services can make your system run like week-old pudding.

Now for the shy and nervous out there, who are saying as you read this—”This Andy Walker dude is a nut”—I understand the objection. Manipulating services in Vista is not for the faint of heart. Doing so without a level head and a bucket of cautiousness is just plain dumb.

So, I am not advocating that you do any of this. However, it’s my job to show you what is possible in Vista with this book. Besides teaching you a thing or two, I want to open the door for you to explore beyond your current confidence level, after you define yourself as “advanced but not an expert.”

But, instead of warning you like your mother might, I am instead going to put the advice into a kind of parable....

One day, there was a nice author who handed two nice readers a piece of rope each that he had tied into a noose. He said, “Dear friends, don’t put this around your neck.” And, after a pause, added, “If you ignore my advice and put it around your neck, don’t tie the other end to a tree and jump off a branch.” The clever reader, understanding the warnings, decided to put the rope to good use and responsibly helped an old lady pull her car out of a ditch. The stupid reader tied the noose around his neck, tied it to a tree, and said, “Don’t do this?” Then he leaped off the branch. The author and clever reader get together now and then, drink a beer, and laugh about the stupid reader. The End.

Here’s a Noose: Don’t Put It Around Your Neck

If you would like to investigate further, you can see what each one of these services does, as follows:

1. Click the Windows button, type Computer Management in the Search box, and click Computer Management when it appears.

2. Click Continue in the User Account Control (UAC) dialog.

3. In the left pane, click Services and Applications, and then in the middle pane, double-click on Services.

4. Click on each service to see a description of what it does and what state it is in (see Figure 3.9).

Figure 3.9. Hey, look—that’s Windows Defender, Vista’s built-in antispyware tool. You can use the Computer Management tool to investigate it and other services in Vista.

5. If a service is running and you want to stop it, you can change its status by clicking on an item and looking for the Stop command that appears at the top-left side of the middle pane of the Computer Management dialog.

6. This will stop it only for your current Windows session. When you reboot, it is still set to start again, so you will need to uncheck it in the Services tab of System Configuration to turn it off permanently.

Selective Startup

A quick way to switch off all the items in your Startup or Services tab is to use the radio buttons on the General tab of System Configuration. Choose Selective Startup and then uncheck the boxes next to Load System Services and Load Startup Items (see Figure 3.10).

Figure 3.10. Selective startup is a good way to turn off all the services and/or startup applications so you can isolate a troublemaker.

If you’re suffering from a specific system problem on startup, use selective startup to help isolate the problem. Turn off everything, and then turn items back on one by one until the problem comes back and you can isolate which startup application or service is causing the startup headache.

My System Won’t Sleep, Shut Down, or Restart

System shutdown issues can be almost as annoying as a slow startup. To understand what happens when Vista closes down, let’s use your home and your children (if you have them) as an analogy.

When you want to leave the house and go to work, like Vista shutting down your computer, you have a lot to do.

First, you have to get the kids off to school (Vista would shut down running applications). Then, you turn off the TV, the radio, and the stove (Vista would release active peripherals and hardware); then you turn off the lights and adjust the heating or cooling (Vista shuts off Windows services). You then set the alarm (Vista shuts down the firewall at the last minute) and close the door and lock it (Vista shuts down the system, and it powers down).

Any one of those thing can go wrong, and often does. Applications, like children, stall and throw tantrums. Hardware, like your TV or oven, can require some fiddling to shut off.

Services need to be shut down, just as essential home systems such as the furnace or air conditioning have to be set to away.

Like leaving home, a Vista system shutdown can be fraught with problems, delays, and interruptions.

Still, Microsoft has done a nice job of improving this experience. Shutdown and the related Sleep mode are faster than ever:

• Microsoft has engineered the power-down options so that a device driver (such as your printer) cannot bellyache and stop a power down.

• If Vista asks a program or driver to terminate, it waits 2 seconds for a response, rather than the default 20 seconds in XP.

• And, to that end, software developers must design third-party programs and drivers for these new shutdown rules.

Power-Down Modes

Let me differentiate between Vista power-down modes:

• Sleep—This allows the system to go into a low power mode, yet preserves your desktop, data, and running programs. When you wake it again, the system resumes where you left off with all data and applications running just as they were before the system went to sleep. It’s ideal for laptops, but is useful for the desktop if you like to walk away and resume what you were doing later (and aren’t annoyed by waiting for your system to wake back up before you can do anything).

• Shutdown—This process shuts down applications, turns off services, disconnects peripherals, and shuts off the computer.

• Restart—This is the same as shutdown except that the computer doesn’t fully power down; instead, it reboots.

• Hibernate—XP had power-down features called Hibernate and Standby. In Vista, these have been rolled into the new Sleep mode; however, Hibernate—which is a more potent power down, where it saves an image of your desktop with all open files and documents and then powers off—is still available in Vista’s advanced power settings.

How to Put Your Computer to Sleep

You can put your machine into Sleep mode as follows:

1. Click the Windows button.

2. Click the right-facing triangle (see Figure 3.11) to the right of the lock on the Start menu.

Figure 3.11. Access shutdown and sleep commands by clicking the right-pointing triangle on the bottom of the Start menu.

3. Choose Sleep.

To resume from sleep, simply push the power button on your computer once and have a bit of patience, as waking up can sometimes take a few seconds.

Shut-the-#@$!-Off: Fixing Shutdowns and Sleep

So what do you do when you are done for the day, the Sominex is kicking in, and you click Shut Down (or Restart or Sleep) on your computer, but it’s not ready for bed? Maybe it stalls, hangs, crashes, or takes a very long time to do what it is told.

The temptation when this happens is to do a hard shutdown by holding in the power button for several seconds so you can go hit the pillow. But that’s not going to fix the issue.

Besides, a hard shutdown is not good for your system. Doing this can cause corrupt files, programs, and operating system files.

So what to do? Go to bed. Troubleshooting a shutdown is a daytime activity. But when you get up, here are a few solutions to common shutdown problems.

Update Your Graphics Card Driver

A majority of shutdown and sleep problems usually have something to do with your graphics card. Historically, an ornery graphics driver can cause all kinds of system mayhem. So off the bat, go update it. Here’s how:

1. Check the make and model of your graphics card or adapter by clicking the Windows button, and then typing Device Manager in the Search box.

2. Click Device Manager when it appears in the Start menu to open it.

3. Go down the list of devices in Device Manager and click the plus sign (+) next to Display Adapters (see Figure 3.12).

Figure 3.12. Locate your graphics adapter in the Device Manager, find out what make and model you have, and what driver version is on the system. Right-click on it to access the driver update option.

4. Check the version number of the driver by right-clicking on the adapter, choosing Properties, and then clicking the Driver tab.

5. Check to see whether a newer version is available for download from the graphics adapter manufacturer’s website under the driver, downloads, or support areas.

6. You can also right-click on the adapter in the Device Manager and choose to update the driver and opt for the system to automatically search for an update.

7. My preferred approach is to download the driver from the graphics adapter maker’s website and use its own installer, if it ships with an executable setup file (such as setup.exe).

8. If that’s not an option, install the new driver by right-clicking on the adapter in the Device Manager, choosing Update Driver, and then choosing Browse My Computer for Driver Software.

9. Navigate to the folder where you put the driver files extracted from the driver package you downloaded from the Internet (see Figure 3.13) and let Vista look for the right driver file.

Figure 3.13. Use the Update Driver Software function in Device Manager to browse to the folder where you have downloaded driver update files and let Vista figure out which INF file to use for the driver update.

Surefire Diagnostic for Your Video Adapter

If you’d like a surefire way to test whether your video driver is at fault, try running the system with the Base Video option enabled.

Vista can use a basic video driver that’s built into the operating system. After this is enabled, try a shutdown and see whether the problematic shutdown process goes away.

Here’s how to run your system with base video enabled:

1. Be sure you’re logged in as an administrator.

2. Click the Windows button and then type msconfig.

3. Click Continue on the UAC dialog box.

4. Click the Boot tab on the System Configuration tool.

5. Leave the Safe Boot option unchecked, but check Base Video (see Figure 3.14).

Figure 3.14. Use the Base Video setting in the System Configuration applet to troubleshoot your graphics driver.

6. Restart the system and then test shutdown or restart and see whether the problem goes away. If it does, the culprit is the video card or its driver that is causing your shutdown problem. Don’t forget to uncheck Base Video after you have finished.

Update Your Chipset Drivers

Most motherboards and their related chipsets have a set of ACPI drivers that control power and thermal management in a computer. Updating a system’s ACPI drivers will often cure a hanging shutdown.

Sounds complicated, but it’s not. Simply go to your computer maker’s website and look for either a specific update for power management drivers or more likely a chipset driver update (see Figure 3.15).

Figure 3.15. Update your chipset drivers obtained from your computer maker (Dell in my desktop’s case) to fix power management issues that may be hanging your shutdown.

Update Your BIOS

Similarly, a BIOS update may also magically fix a problematic or strangely behaving shutdown. The BIOS is the software stored on a chip on the motherboard that contains hardware settings and basic system plumbing information. It also gives the system the capability to boot and some functionality before an operating system such as Windows Vista starts up. Updating the BIOS is not necessary all the time, but it’s worthwhile once a year or when unexplainable problems appear.

BIOS updates are usually made available from your computer maker’s website unless your system was built by you or by a smaller or local computer assembler. In that case, a BIOS update will be available from your motherboard maker’s website.

In the old days, you had to create a BIOS update floppy disk and boot with it to flash update the BIOS. Today, this has been replaced by a bootable CD or DVD, or more commonly an executable file that runs from your desktop (see Figure 3.16).

Figure 3.16. Update your BIOS with a utility available from your computer or motherboard maker, like this one from the Dell.com website.

When you run it, be sure you are logged in as an administrator, or right-click on the file before you execute it, choose Run As Administrator, and provide an administrator user ID and password from an admin user account on your system.

Be sure you are cautious when doing a BIOS update because if you screw it up or if you lose power during an update, your system could be rendered unbootable.

I show you how to do a careful step-by-step BIOS update in Chapter 8, “Hardware Headaches.”

Wake On LAN Setting Sticks

The Wake On LAN setting is a feature that lets an instruction from your network wake the machine so it can be remotely controlled. This is often used in a corporate environment to apply patches, fixes, or new policies to a large number of machines. An inbound call to your computer’s modem can also trigger this.

As a home or small business user, you generally don’t need it or the hassles it can cause. It can also cause problems with shutdown or Sleep mode.

So turn it off.

Wake On LAN settings can be adjusted through your computer’s BIOS. If BIOS and Wake On LAN is set to Disabled, it may be that Vista is responsible for waking up the system.

Find out as follows:

1. Click the Windows button and type Device Manager.

2. Click the plus sign (+) next to Network Adapters to reveal your computer’s network adapter (where the network plugs in to).

3. Right-click on the adapter and choose Properties.

4. When you do, you’ll see the network card’s properties sheet. Select the Power Management tab and verify that the Allow This Device To Wake the Computer option is deselected (see Figure 3.17).

Figure 3.17. Use the Power Management tab of your network adapter to stop Wake On LAN settings from jamming up shutdown.

Unplug USB Devices

Although Vista’s engineering is designed not to let devices obstruct a shutdown, there’s no guarantee that some devices won’t still get in the way or cause sleep or shutdown a bit of grief. If you have weird problems and can’t seem to get to the bottom of them, unplug any unnecessary USB devices and see whether that doesn’t solve the problems.

Of course, you can figure out which specific device is the issue by adding devices back in one at a time until the problem returns. See whether there is a driver update for the USB device to attempt to fix it.

Oddly enough, sometimes changing the USB port can rectify an odd problem. Or switch from the ports on the back of the machine to the front. Plugging the device into a powered USB hub can also solve problems. Why? I don’t know. Why are cakes yummy? Why do chipmunks chitter? Because they are and they do.

Finicky High-End Keyboards and Mice

If you have an upgraded mouse or keyboard with extra fun and funky controls and features, swap these out with a generic mouse and keyboard (if you have them) and see whether they are causing the grief. Often these devices have extra software applications to allow for quick keys, Internet controls, and other extras.

Look for Vista-specific driver updates from their makers’ websites and install them. Do this especially if the keyboard or mouse is brand-spanking new. Chances are the hardware has shipped with new 1.0 software applications, which, as you probably know by now, are usually rife with bugs.

Privacy Software Delays Shutdown

A very slow shutdown might be the result of an attempt to clear your pagefile. That’s the work area Windows uses on your hard disk when it runs out of memory. It’s sometimes called virtual memory or a scratch disk.

Some privacy software might have set Vista to erase this scratch disk before shutdown. This long pause might appear as if Vista has hung while it does the cleanup.

To test to see whether this feature has been turned on by a privacy application, follow these steps:

1. To determine whether this pagefile wiping feature has been enabled on your PC, click the Windows button and type gpedit.msc in the Search box.

2. Click Continue on the UAC dialog and the Group Policy Editor loads.

3. On the left, click the arrows next to the following items to navigate into the console: Computer Configuration, Windows Settings, Security Settings, Local Policies, Security Options.

4. Find Shutdown: Clear Virtual Memory Pagefile. If it is set to Enabled (see Figure 3.18), disable it by double-clicking on the setting and choosing Disabled.

Figure 3.18. If Clear Virtual Memory Pagefile is enabled, it will cause a very slow shutdown. Turn it off using the Group Policy Editor.

Troubleshooting Sleep Mode

If your system refuses to go into Sleep mode but shuts down okay, it could be because your video card does not support Sleep mode.

To solve this problem, update your video card driver and control software. Some cards come with applications that load into the System Tray (bottom-right side of the screen) or your Control Panel or Start menu. Explore these applets—they may have features that enable the card to allow for Sleep mode. If this program is out of date, update it from the graphics card maker’s website.

Powerful Power Options

If you want to fiddle with how the system shuts down or sleeps, delve into the advanced power settings (see Figure 3.19) to see whether you can tweak the shutdown and sleep mechanisms to your liking.

Figure 3.19. The advanced power settings for Vista’s power options allow you to tweak how the system behaves when it shuts down or sleeps.

To get there:

1. Click the Windows button and type power options.

2. Click on the left: Change When the Computer Sleeps.

3. Click Change Advanced Power Settings.

The Bottom Line

After all this, if you are still flummoxed by a buggy shutdown or sleep, you should double check to see whether Microsoft has posted any bulletins about sleep or shutdown issues at http://support.microsoft.com.

Microsoft has heavily reengineered this end of the operating system, and there are sure to be all kinds of bugs, hardware incompatibilities, and odd behavior as a result of the new code.

Watch for postings on this in Microsoft’s support site, and be sure to run Windows Update regularly or automatically, as any issues that emerge will be repaired through a downloadable patch or fix.

Learn more about configuring Windows Update in Chapter 9, “Software Troubles.”