When shutting down or restarting Windows, the following messages appear:
? “End Program ” SW. The system cannot end this program because it is waiting for a response from you”
” ?dwwin.exe ? DLL initialisation failed. The application failed to initialise because the Windows station is shutting down”
” ?AcroRd32.exe ? Application Error. The instruction @ 0×5ad71531 referenced memory at 0×00000014. The memory could not be read?
These actions do not appear to cause any problems, but it would be nice to prevent them from interrupting the shutdown process.

The first error message which appears on shutdown, relating to the process SW, is of most concern. The SW process is generally associated with the SW.EXE file, a known spyware file and part of the SilentSpy spyware. Technical details of the spyware at the Symantec Security Response website indicate this spyware takes screen shots of programs which you use, together with logging keystrokes, and which websites you visit. Given the potentially major security issues this presents, you should check whether your computer is infected with the SilentSpy spyware and take any necessary removal action. As a first step, you should download and run Ad-Aware Free (www.lavasoft.de), Spybot Search & Destroy (www.safer-networking.org), and Windows Defender (www.microsoft.com/downloads). Between these three utilities, hopefully most adware and spyware should be detected and removed. However, should you continue to be bothered by this spyware, you may need to take manual removal action. In this case, check the manual removal instructions for this spyware at the Symantec website: www.symantec.com/security_response/writeup.jsp?docid=2004-061111-5712-99&tabid=3 . While these instructions do use Symantec Antivirus, which you may not have installed, if you delete the registry keys and other files as defined in the article this should eliminate the core infection.

Regarding the second message concerning ?dwwin.exe?, this is the Dr Watson Error Collection process, used by Windows to collect information on faults with the computer. While this is harmless in itself, it can cause problems on shutdown such as the one being experienced at the moment. Interestingly enough, the Dr Watson error is linked to the following ?AcroRd32.exe? error, which relates to Acrobat Reader. Numerous users have reported encountering both these errors, much like you are experiencing. The common cause of this problem is running Acrobat Reader 7 on the computer. The reason is actually related to Acrobat Reader having the ability to display PDF files within web browsers, such as Internet Explorer and Firefox. When you view a PDF file within the web browser, Acrobat Reader opens a process in the background to display the PDF file. However, due to a bug in Acrobat Reader 7, the process does not close once the web browser is closed or the PDF file is closed. Windows detects this as an error, and starts Dr Watson to investigate and collect information on the error. As a result, these programs are both running at shutdown and therefore cause the error messages on shutdown notifying that these processes are still running. Fortunately, this problem can be resolved relatively easily. The first method is to uninstall Acrobat Reader from the computer, then download and install the latest version of Acrobat Reader which has this bug resolved. You can obtain the latest version of Acrobat Reader from: www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html . Should downloading and installing the latest version of Acrobat Reader not resolve the problem, the other alternative is to disable PDF files from being displayed inside web browsers. This will mean that when you attempt to open a PDF file from the internet, the actual Acrobat Reader program will be opened separately. To disable displaying PDF files within the web browser, open the Acrobat Reader program and go to the “Edit” menu > “Preferences”. Click the “Internet” section and untick “Display PDF in browser”. Click OK to save and close.