From: Mike '/m' 

At first I thought it was just me.  At first I thought there was something
in my environment that was causing Windows to take so long to shut down. 
Then I noticed a couple of things.

The first was that a new install of Windows 2000 shut down quickly. 
However, once I visited the Windows Update site and started to bring W2K up
to date with all the critical fixes, the shutdown delay appeared. 
Somewhere during the multiple download, install and reboot process, I
noticed that the shutdowns were taking longer and longer.   It might have
been the download of
27 critical patches that was the cause.

At that point I was still thinking it was something I was doing.  Then I
got a new notebook with W2K on it.  I wanted to test the system recovery,
so I did the recovery option that does a clean install of W2K.  The initial
install shut down quickly.  However, after I visited Windows Update and
downloaded the critical patches, the shutdown slowness appeared, even on
that new notebook.

So now I'm thinking that it is me or my home network.  Then I see a cartoon
in the November 2004 issue of Optimize, a trade rag for CIO's published by
CMP Media.  On page 17 the cartoon shows an office worker who has fallen
asleep at his desk, the clock on the wall says 8:00.  It is nighttime
because you can see the window lights of other office buildings in the
background.  There is a cleaning lady looking at the office worker in a
darkened office.  His face is lit up by the glow of the PC's monitor.  On
the screen, the monitor says, "Please Wait While Windows Shuts
Down".

Once I saw that, I thought, it's not something I'm doing.

So now that begs the question, what in the world is causing Windows to take
nearly two minutes from the time I tell it to shutdown until the time it
actually shuts down?  It used to take a few seconds.

Has anyone else seen this problem?

 /m

--- BBBS/NT v4.01 Flag-5