PC takes *FOREVER* to shut off

Older Dell tower running XP Home SP3. All other aspects of this PC are OK. It runs well, boots well, it even restarts normally, but if I select "Shut down", it takes over 7 minutes (probably over 10 minutes) to completely shut off. It gets to the "Windows is shutting down screen" in a normal amount of time (about 30 seconds at the most), but then it sits there for a looong time. I have scanned for malware (clean except for some tracking cookies), performed all the general maintenance like cleaning out junk/temp files, uninstalling old programs, streamlining the start up programs, etc. It's just weird that if I choose "Restart", it shuts down normally, but "Shut down" takes such a long time. Any ideas, thoughts, or suggestions will be appreciated. Thanks!

 

Hidden processes running in the background that has to save before closing?
Do you have any type of back-up program scheduled to update files automatically?

 

did you set the system to clear the page file at shutdown? that can cause drastic shut down lengths particularly if you've set your page file to 2gig or more.

 

No backup-type programs, but other scheduled automatic updaters were running; see below....

It seems that the problem is taken care of: I performed DEEP hard drive cleaning, purged the system restore folder, deep defrag/optimize, removed lots of superfluous crap-ola, and disabled all the scheduled updaters for things like HP printer drivers, and the shut down time has gone from over 5 or 10 minutes, to about 45 seconds. Still not ideal, but definitely MUCH better!!!

Thanks for the suggestions - I'll keep 'em in mind the next time something like this comes along.

(I say "not ideal" because my personal home PC boots to login screen in about 10-12 seconds, and shuts down completely in about 8 seconds - anything over 15-20 seconds is, IMHO, "not ideal" LOL )