VERY strange shutdown problem XP

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Vigilante

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It started when a customer of mine tried to load NIS2005 over NAV2002. Didn't work so he did a system restore, effectively removing NIS and putting NAV back on. However I'm sure there was a jumble of files left over from each.

I came in and COMPLETELY wiped ALL traces of Norton from the hard drive and registry. Scanned for viruses and spyware, startups etc...

Then successfully reloaded NIS2005 and it's all working, system is clean. He has very few startups. The only system tray icons are Volume, MSN, Epson status, and NIS2005.

The problem is, it won't shut down or restart. But once in a blue moon it will.

It goes to the screen where XP says "Windows is shutting down", and will either freeze there (can't move mouse) or just doesn't go any farther. I have to hard boot it. It's an HP Pavilion 552x so I get no restart button.

I believe XP is successfully shutting itself off, it just isn't powering down. Because XP doesn't tell me I had an invalid shutdown.

Now here is the "very strange" part. Most of the time I can shut down through "Start-shutdown" and it will work. But it almost ALWAYS freezes there if I shut down through a dialog box. As in change to MSCONFIG or an update or something. If a dialog says "Click OK to shutdown now", it will freeze like I said. But if I cancel and use the Start menu, I get a 50% chance it'll work.

So then...
Like I said, I've cleaned it up for internet related stuff. I've turned off Sound Scheme, I've checked there are no duplicated drivers or anything like that. I've checked power management. I've changed the registry key "PowerdownAfterShutdown" from "0" to "1".

What's weird is that it never had this problem until the restore and reinstalling NIS. BUT, even when I totally striped NIS and NAV out of there, it was still doing it. So it MUST be a problem with Windows. However, I didn't do anything to Windows. As in, it couldn't be a driver problem etc...

I've gone through various "bad shutdown" web sites and tried a dozen fixes, nothing works.
And again, it seems to be way worse when restarting from a dialog box. I find it interresting too that the mouse freezes. I think XP is just a millisecond away from powering down but is missing one thing to do it.

It's driving me MAD!!!

Xp Home SP2 and all updates
256mb (minus 32 shared video)
onboard everything except modem
P4 1.60ghz

Well guys, any suggestions? Thanks.
 
I had that happen to me on my old OS, Windows 2000. It was because of Sound Blaster drivers, specifically devldr32.exe. It is very buggy and hard to remove. Is this machine using the same sound card and is running that program?
 
Alright guys.

I don't want to do a repair or "last known" or "In-place-upgrade" or anything like that. Because I've already cleared all those backups. And I don't want to repair because I don't think it's really that messed up. It only started doing this when he messed with NIS2005.

I wouldn't have guessed a sound driver, because NIS doesn't jack with sound, nor did I. And it's a SiS onboard sound 7012 I believe. But I will update it anyways and see.

The UPHClean looks interresting, I've never come across that before. On this problem though, it does get past the 'logging off" and "saving settings" screens. Then freezes on the next "Windows is shutting down" screen. But I will try that next if the sound card doesn't fix it.

Thanks, I'll keep you posted until it is fixed.
 
Well I won't believe it but it looks like it may have been sound after all. Though this one is onboard SiS 7012 and doesn't use the devldr32 at all. Not only that but neither I nor NIS did anything at all with the sound card, I'm am clueless as to how it got corrupted.

Just before updating it I had ran like 6 different file system and registry cleaners, hoping to nix the ActiveX problem, I thought. But still no.

I then updated the sound through Windows Updates, which, I never do drivers by Windows Updates. But in this case, sure enough, it started shutting down right.
I restarted about 6 times and shutdown about 4 times and then sent the machine back. So far so good.
I don't believe it.

Thanks a lot!
 
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