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I need a bit of help, nine times out of ten when I try to shutdown my computer it'll get to the "Windows is shutting down" bit and stop, then won't respond to anything, and I end up having to turn it off manually.

I've googled and most things it comes up with say to go to the APM tab in Power Settings and enable Advanced Power Management Support, but I don't have an APM tab in Power Settings, so that's no good.

Another thing is to go to Device Manager, show hidden devices and then enable NT Apm/Legacy Interface Node, but that's not there. I don't even have the NT APM/Legacy Support branch which it's meant to be under.

Help?

What you want to do is clear all extraneous crap from the C:\Windows\Temp folder, clear all temp internet files from IE if you use that piece of shit browser, and download XP Anti-spy and use that to tweak the system settings so that Windows clears the pagefile every time it shuts down or reboots.

It won't hurt to defrag your hard drive either, a severely fragmented HD or one with very little space will fuck up your Windows installation in a hurry. You can also adjust the virtual memory settings so that Windows always uses a fixed amount, it'll help keep your HD from fragmenting so quickly.

If none of that helps, have somebody who knows computers well take a look at it or barring otehr options, take it to a computer repair shop. unless you want to reinstall Windows.

Edi

Edi wrote:You can also adjust the virtual memory settings so that Windows always uses a fixed amount, it'll help keep your HD from fragmenting so quickly.

NTFS isn't nearly so prone to fragmentation as to warrant screwing around with the page file settings. Just let Windows manage page file size and all will be well.

Is ACPI enabled in your BIOS? You can tell if you do the following (aside from rebooting, going into your BIOS and looking in your Power Management settings):

Hold down the windows key and press the pause key. (keyboard shortcut to your system properties) Click the Hardware tab and click on the "Device Manager" button. At the very top there should be a listing called "Computer". Click the + next to it and you should have listed "ACPI Uniprocessor PC". If you do, then I would go to the website for your motherboard manufacturer and check for updated drivers for your board.

Uraniun235 wrote:

Edi wrote:You can also adjust the virtual memory settings so that Windows always uses a fixed amount, it'll help keep your HD from fragmenting so quickly.

NTFS isn't nearly so prone to fragmentation as to warrant screwing around with the page file settings. Just let Windows manage page file size and all will be well.

Let's just say that in the three months I've been working at a computer repair shop, I've seen plenty of evidence to the contrary. Half of the machines that come in for repairs, if it's anything related to the operating system, are so fucked up by fragmented hard drives that their speed improves by a significant amount after defragging. The worst one I saw had something like 50% overall and 75% file fragmentation.

Of course, the best way to do things is use a fixed amount of space on the OS partition and have a dedicated partition for the swap file that Windows can fuck with. Limiting minimum and maximum virtual memory to the same fixed amount will improve system stability. So will clearing the pagefile at shutdown, but trying to find that setting without XP Antispy is like looking for a needle in a bloody haystack.

Edi

Edi wrote:Let's just say that in the three months I've been working at a computer repair shop, I've seen plenty of evidence to the contrary. Half of the machines that come in for repairs, if it's anything related to the operating system, are so fucked up by fragmented hard drives that their speed improves by a significant amount after defragging. The worst one I saw had something like 50% overall and 75% file fragmentation.

If their machines are so heavily fragmented to the point where swapfile access are killing performance, they need (1) more RAM and (2) a bigger hard drive.

Of course, the best way to do things is use a fixed amount of space on the OS partition and have a dedicated partition for the swap file that Windows can fuck with. Limiting minimum and maximum virtual memory to the same fixed amount will improve system stability. So will clearing the pagefile at shutdown, but trying to find that setting without XP Antispy is like looking for a needle in a bloody haystack.

I have not noticed any sort of stability improvement in my years of NT experience from messing with the pagefile settings nor from zeroing the pagefile.

Edi wrote:

Uraniun235 wrote:

Edi wrote:You can also adjust the virtual memory settings so that Windows always uses a fixed amount, it'll help keep your HD from fragmenting so quickly.

NTFS isn't nearly so prone to fragmentation as to warrant screwing around with the page file settings. Just let Windows manage page file size and all will be well.

Let's just say that in the three months I've been working at a computer repair shop, I've seen plenty of evidence to the contrary. Half of the machines that come in for repairs, if it's anything related to the operating system, are so fucked up by fragmented hard drives that their speed improves by a significant amount after defragging. The worst one I saw had something like 50% overall and 75% file fragmentation.

Are you sure they were using NTFS? Remember that WinXP still supports FAT32, which is far more prone to fragmentation.

On the subject of filesystems, I'm wondering if it's worth reformatting my drive to XFS in the future given I use Ext3 right now and have heard it's really not all that impresive next to SGI's system.

phongn wrote:

Edi wrote:Let's just say that in the three months I've been working at a computer repair shop, I've seen plenty of evidence to the contrary. Half of the machines that come in for repairs, if it's anything related to the operating system, are so fucked up by fragmented hard drives that their speed improves by a significant amount after defragging. The worst one I saw had something like 50% overall and 75% file fragmentation.

If their machines are so heavily fragmented to the point where swapfile access are killing performance, they need (1) more RAM and (2) a bigger hard drive.

Often it has been becasue the HD has never been defragged, so even machines with 20 GB of stuff and 70 GB of free space with decent RAM have been fragmented all to hell and been faster after defrag. Not many of those, often it's a combination of too little free space, just enough memory to run WinXP and no maintenance at all for years.

phongn wrote:

Edi wrote:Of course, the best way to do things is use a fixed amount of space on the OS partition and have a dedicated partition for the swap file that Windows can fuck with. Limiting minimum and maximum virtual memory to the same fixed amount will improve system stability. So will clearing the pagefile at shutdown, but trying to find that setting without XP Antispy is like looking for a needle in a bloody haystack.

I have not noticed any sort of stability improvement in my years of NT experience from messing with the pagefile settings nor from zeroing the pagefile.

I guess it's not much of an issue with newer computers. Or perhaps I chose the wrong words. My own machine is so ancient that I need every advantage I can get, and limiting the virtual memory has at least reduced the necessity to defrag too often, which also keeps the machine running faster with less maintenance. Might be I'm also assuming that something that worked with Windows 98 is good for WinXP, and I've had no negative experiences at all of straightjacketing the virtual memory instead of letting Windows manage it.

Edi

Edi wrote:Often it has been becasue the HD has never been defragged, so even machines with 20 GB of stuff and 70 GB of free space with decent RAM have been fragmented all to hell and been faster after defrag. Not many of those, often it's a combination of too little free space, just enough memory to run WinXP and no maintenance at all for years.

If a machine with 20GB used and 70GB free is heavily fragmented ... it probably isn't much of an issue unless its a media machine (in which fast I/O of large files is neccessary). Defragmentation is overrated.

I guess it's not much of an issue with newer computers. Or perhaps I chose the wrong words. My own machine is so ancient that I need every advantage I can get, and limiting the virtual memory has at least reduced the necessity to defrag too often, which also keeps the machine running faster with less maintenance.

Even with old NT4 machines I had no problems with the default settings, oddly enough.

Might be I'm also assuming that something that worked with Windows 98 is good for WinXP, and I've had no negative experiences at all of straightjacketing the virtual memory instead of letting Windows manage it.

Windows 98 is very different from XP - might as well consider them different operating systems.

phongn wrote:

Edi wrote:Often it has been becasue the HD has never been defragged, so even machines with 20 GB of stuff and 70 GB of free space with decent RAM have been fragmented all to hell and been faster after defrag. Not many of those, often it's a combination of too little free space, just enough memory to run WinXP and no maintenance at all for years.

If a machine with 20GB used and 70GB free is heavily fragmented ... it probably isn't much of an issue unless its a media machine (in which fast I/O of large files is neccessary). Defragmentation is overrated.

Ultra-High fragmentation can have major preformance hits. But it is generally damn hard todo that, also Windows built in defragger will reorders file fragments for best access which helps considerably on commonly used applications

Windows 98 is very different from XP - might as well consider them different operating systems.

Correction; they are different operating systems. That stuff written for user-land(aka apps) Windows 98 can even work on WinXP is a brilliant example of how good Microsoft is at supporting the Win32 API.