Even though my Dell laptop says “Shutting Down” it doesn’t actually finish this process and turn off, but instead I need to press and hold the power button for 10 seconds to completely turn off the machine. The advice that I was given is the laptop was downloading some program and I need to reinstall Windows. However, this doesn’t seem to have fixed the problem. Not even the antivirus vendor has been able to work out this problem! Can you help?

The hanging shutdown generally would not be caused by a program downloading from the internet, since any active downloads should be terminated when Windows initiates the shutdown procedure. Likewise, since the problem is happening every time the computer is shutdown that would indicate the problem is related to something ongoing rather than a download which should eventually finish. In most cases the problem is related to some program or process not ending, causing the entire computer shutdown to hang and not complete. However, tracking down the exact program or process can prove to be a difficult procedure. Intriguingly, you also mentioned that reinstalling Windows did not resolve the problem. To confirm, did you actually completely reinstall Windows using the Dell recovery CDs (or recovery partition) which came with the machine? If you had to reinstall all of your programs, and restore a backup of your data following the reinstallation, then you did do a clean reinstallation as the computer was reset back to its factory default state. If you did not need to do all of this after the reinstallation procedure then you did not do a clean reinstallation of Windows. That’s alright, as we may be able to solve the issue without resorting to doing the full reinstallation.

Continuing on the assumption that you did not actually do a reinstallation of Windows, we should look at the programs and processes which are running on your computer immediately prior to shutdown to check whether one of those is causing the problem. However, without knowing the version of Windows which you are running this makes the diagnosis much more difficult. The instructions that I will provide are for Windows XP, although they should be equally applicable to Windows Vista and Windows 7 (with slight modifications in some parts). When you are ready to shutdown the computer, first make sure that you close all visibly open programs, including any which are running in the system tray and can be exited. Once you have closed all visible programs, press CTRL-ALT-DEL to open the Windows Task Manager. Click the “Processes” tab that will show all the background processes (essentially invisible programs which perform functionality that doesn’t require user interaction). For troubleshooting purposes we will also want to close all non-essential background processes. Generally, you can safely close processes which are running under your own user name (when I say safely, I mean without causing system instability – if you need the functionality provided by one of those processes terminating it prematurely could still cause some degree of functionality impairment or error). Since we are ready to shutdown the computer it probably doesn’t matter if the functionality provided by those processes is impaired or terminated, so we can proceed. You should see a “User Name” column in the table of processes. If not, go to the “View” menu > “Select Columns” and tick “User Name”. Click the “User Name” column heading to sort all the processes by user name. Select each process running under your user name and click “End Process” to terminate that process. Do not terminate “explorer.exe” or “taskmgr.exe”. The “explorer.exe” is the Windows user interface which you need to use Windows, and “taskmgr.exe” is the Task Manager that you are currently using to close processes! If you find that a process reappears (relaunches) after it is terminated that is fine, just leave that process (as it is likely being relaunched for some reason). Do not attempt to close processes running under other user names or system accounts as they are required for Windows functionality and closing those processes could cause system instability.

Once you have finished closing the processes running under your user name (or closed as many as you can) exit the Task Manager. Proceed to shutdown the computer and check whether the computer shuts down correctly. If so, one of those visible programs that you closed or background processes that you terminated, is the cause of the problem. In this situation it will just be a process of elimination to determine the exact program or process. Restart the computer so all the programs and processes reload, and then repeat the same process but closing one program or process at time (or using a divide and conquer approach), shutting down the computer and then checking whether the problem occurs. When the problem ceases you know the program or process causing the problem. At that point you may wish to conduct some more research into the problem, such as searching the internet for the program or process name along with a short description of the issue, to see whether this is a known problem with a fix. I am happy to provide assistance as well if you send through the relevant information.

While a program or process hanging the shutdown is one of the more common explanations for the problem, there are a wealth of other possible causes relating to conflicting device drivers and services running on the computer (far too many to discuss in the space of this column). Therefore, while it is a heavy handed approach, you may want to do a clean reinstallation of Windows. As you were previously prepared to do a reinstallation of Windows, hopefully this should not come as a major inconvenience. However, before doing the reinstallation make sure that you backup all data on the computer that you wish to keep (such as documents, emails, etc.) as all data will be lost as the result of the reinstallation process since the computer hard drive will be completely wiped and then a fresh copy of Windows installed. Once you have a good backup of your data, insert the Dell recovery CD into the computer (or boot to the recovery hard drive partition, depending on the configuration of your computer). You should be able to find instructions for both procedures in the manual that came with your computer. Follow through the prompts and ensure that (if asked) you tell the setup to do a clean installation of Windows, otherwise the installer may simply install Windows back over the top of the existing installation (which can fix some problems, but not others).

We will now consider the situation where you did in fact do a clean reinstallation of Windows previously, yet the problem continues. In this situation it is possible there is a hardware problem with the computer itself, or a conflict between the computer hardware and the installation of Windows (perhaps the device drivers). In this situation I would strongly suggest that you contact Dell technical support since they will need to advise on the problem, being the manufacturer of the computer and they will have a much better knowledge of such issues and possible ways to resolve the problem given your particular model of computer.