Computer won't turn off

[Nate]

I've been having an irritating problem since yesterday, and it seemed to appear for no reason. When I go to my start menu and click "Turn Off" it doesn't matter whether I pick Restart or Shut Down, the computer won't do either. It just sits there. I have to turn off the power strip my computer is connected to, which gets annoying after a while.

Any idea what could be causing this problem? I haven't downloaded any programs, not recently anyway, I think the last program I downloaded was the YIM 7.5, but the computer shut down normally for a while after that.

I'm running Windows XP on a Sony Vaio, and I can probably find out anything else you need to know to help me. I'd appreciate it if you guys could help me out.

[Mr. SmartyPants]

You probably have some background programs running that you don't know about. Check your task manager for any running programs.

If you want to turn off your computer another way, simply hold the powerbutton for like 10 seconds.

[Puritan]

Have you tried this?

[Nate]

Have you tried this?

I did what it said, but the last step seems to have been cut off...or maybe I'm not smart enough to figure out what to do after that. ^^;; It says some stuff about power saving settings, which isn't what I want, and it says something about power button options. I'm assuming that's talking about the physical power button on the side of my computer, since the current option is "Stand By" and that's what my computer does when I press the power button (which is why I have to turn off the power strip).

I could make it so my computer shuts down when I press the power button, which would be nice, but it doesn't solve the problem of why it won't respond to the "Shut Down" or "Restart" commands from my start menu.

[Myoti]

Kick it. Hard.

I use to have times when mine would be similar to that, though it would just take forever to shut off (probably because of how slow it moves).

Not sure what's up to yours. As MSP said, you can always just reboot it/do a hard reset till someone more helpful knows what to do. :/

[FadedOne]

i've had problems w/ shut down a few times, but that was due to program errors. I always end up taking out the battery. which of course screws with my computer since it just dies. i'm currently in the process of defragging to fix problems i apparently caused that way -_-

so yeah, no help here. but hey, wish you luck!

[SP1]

I've had this problem too. Someone told me once that there are some HP printer driver problems out there that can cause this. Might want to check on driver updates... My HP printer hooks up to the USB port and it's definitely a clock cycle hog, even when I am not using it.

I suspect this is a case of the CPU waiting for a port to close or something, but since it can't talk to it (presumably the underlying problem), it just sits there and doesn't execute the shutdown sequence since it can't turn all the running software off.

You can go CTRL-ALT-DEL and run Task Manager to look at all the processes. Turn them all off, especially suspicious looking ones, one at a time to see which one it is. You probably won't fry your PC doing this. But as with all PC advice, if you trash your hard drive, we never had this conversation.