Extremely slow shut down in vista x64

[CaptNKILL]

Has anyone else had any problems with Vista x64 taking forever to shut down or restart? It just sits at the desktop, with the hard drive blinking a little (not really doing all that much), slowly some of the taskbar and sidebar icons go away but it takes a few minutes for it to actually go to the shutdown screen.

Its really annoying and its the main reason I haven't taken advantage of my dual-booting machine. I have XP available but its just such a pain in the ass to reboot the system that I don't even bother. I've just resorted to hitting the reset button a few times, but I know that isn't good for it so I don't want to keep doing that.

Also, a lot of times when I reboot, I get an error related to Dream Scene and it is disabled. I've just left it off for now. I don't know if the two problems are related.

I have a few other Vista related questions as well:
Is there a way to see what programs are accessing the hard drive? I get a lot of random hard drive accessing and its more than a little annoying. I don't know if its slowing things down or not, but I'd just like to know what my computer is doing.

Also, is there a way to see what is taking up all of my ram? Some times I only have 650Mb of free ram, other times I have around a gig. IMO, thats ridiculous. Task manager shows very little being used by running programs, yet a ton is being used by something. Are there any guides to freeing up more memory in Vista yet?

[nekrosoft13]

nope, mine shuts down in few seconds

check the event viewer, my guess would be either some bad driver, or some program you are using won't let go of the registry

look under event viewer, Applications and Service Logs, Microsoft, Windows, and go to Diagnostics-Performance, it will tell you if your reboot/shutdown degrated performance and what is causing it


don't worry about ram, its being used by cache, if ram is required that cache is released for what every applications require it

[CaptNKILL]

Well, I found the stuff in the event viewer but I don't really know what it all means or if I can do anything about it.

- System

- Provider

[ Name] Microsoft-Windows-Diagnostics-Performance
[ Guid] {cfc18ec0-96b1-4eba-961b-622caee05b0a}

EventID 200

Version 1

Level 1

Task 4007

Opcode 40

Keywords 0x8000000000010000

- TimeCreated

[ SystemTime] 2007-03-24T21:02:29.085Z

EventRecordID 244

- Correlation

[ ActivityID] {00000030-0000-0000-11CE-946C576EC701}

- Execution

[ ProcessID] 1556
[ ThreadID] 2080

Channel Microsoft-Windows-Diagnostics-Performance/Operational

Computer ********

- Security

[ UserID] ***********


- EventData

ShutdownTsVersion 1
ShutdownStartTime 2007-03-24T20:56:37.013Z
ShutdownEndTime 2007-03-24T20:59:58.413Z
ShutdownTime 201399
ShutdownUserSessionTime 166246
ShutdownUserPolicyTime 319
ShutdownUserProfilesTime 434
ShutdownSystemSessionsTime 26070
ShutdownPreShutdownNotificationsTime 3309
ShutdownServicesTime 19997
ShutdownKernelTime 9083
ShutdownRootCauseStepImprovementBits 0
ShutdownRootCauseGradualImprovementBits 0
ShutdownRootCauseStepDegradationBits 0
ShutdownRootCauseGradualDegradationBits 0
ShutdownIsDegradation false
ShutdownTimeChange 0


That one took 3 1\2 minutes...

[CaptNKILL]

I still haven't figured this out yet but I think explorer.exe itself is what isn't shutting down fast enough.

I really have no idea where to go with this...

I've searched the web and the only thing that came up that did anything was lowering the "hung app wait time" so that when windows is shutting down it forces programs to close more quickly. This gave me a few random blue screens on boot so I set it back to normal. It did get rid of the problem but it was mostly just a work around, not a solution. Something is causing a program (most likely explorer.exe because of one of the errors I got) to hang before shut down.

[nekrosoft13]

did you install AV or firewall, that might not be vista compatible?

[Dr.Nick]

I was getting weird startup and shutdown errors in the event manager that were being caused by the floppy drive(taking too long to initialize). I removed it and haven't seen another error since. Funny thing is I thought it was fast as it was. Still I've never experienced any crazy 2-3 minute times..

[nvnews-reader]

I have the same problem in XP. I try not to reboot very often. :rolleyes:

[CaptNKILL]

No Anti-Virus, Spyware or firewall software installed... just windows defender.

And I have a floppy drive in my case but it isn't connected. After I put the thing in I looked at the big retarded cable and thought "is the loss in airflow worth having this drive usable?" :p

Anyway, thanks for the tips guys. I don't know what the hell this is from. I'm pretty sure it just started doing this recently.

[tacos4me]

Using the leaked X-Fi driver/software by any chance?

http://img245.imageshack.us/img245/5991/xfiml5.jpg

I've been suffering from these slow shutdowns/reboots as well. Came across that.. somehow.

[einstein_314]

Using the leaked X-Fi driver/software by any chance?

http://img245.imageshack.us/img245/5991/xfiml5.jpg

I've been suffering from these slow shutdowns/reboots as well. Came across that.. somehow.
Yes I am, and I have slow shutdown/start ups as well. Kinda irritating...but I'd rather have the X-Fi software working....so I'll live with it for now.

[tacos4me]

Yes I am, and I have slow shutdown/start ups as well. Kinda irritating...but I'd rather have the X-Fi software working....so I'll live with it for now.

I've removed it from my startup list, and rebooting is nice and smooth. From what I've read, the only function of CTXFISPI.EXE is to switch your audio output to headphones if you were to connect a pair, which would only work if you have your front panel connectors wired to your X-Fi anyway. I haven't noticed any loss of functionality. :)

[einstein_314]

I've removed it from my startup list, and rebooting is nice and smooth. From what I've read, the only function of CTXFISPI.EXE is to switch your audio output to headphones if you were to connect a pair, which would only work if you have your front panel connectors wired to your X-Fi anyway. I haven't noticed any loss of functionality. :)
Hmmmm, interesting. I do use the front panel for my headphones...and it is nice to have it automatically switch to them when you plug them in...if you disable this service can you still manually switch to headphones? I think I"ll give it a shot tonight when I get home....

[radekhulan]

CTHELPER.EXE is used to automatically switch to headphones / mute speakers, if you use X-Fi and front-panel, and also to set startup options (removing it means your X-Fi settings will be set to defaults after reboot).

CTXFISPI.EXE can be removed, CTHELPER.EXE should be kept.

[einstein_314]

CTHELPER.EXE is used to automatically switch to headphones / mute speakers, if you use X-Fi and front-panel, and also to set startup options (removing it means your X-Fi settings will be set to defaults after reboot).

CTXFISPI.EXE can be removed, CTHELPER.EXE should be kept.
Perfect :thumbsup: Thanks! So what exactly does this CTXFISPI.exe do?