XP Issue: Settings take a long time

.. to save/apply.

Any way to monitor what 'settings' XP saves when you log off/restart?

My PC is taking something like 4-6 minutes everytime I restart or quit out of the O/S

It just gets hangs on the 'Saving your Settings .."
Same again for 'Applying settings' when restarting

Even if I immediately shutdown after restarting it still stalls. What settings is the O/S saving?

I'm guessing some update somewhere along the way as caused the issue.
I'm having to resort to pulling the power cord from the PC out of frustration. I know its not good practice but my patience no longer functions too.

Make the PC go into Hibernation rather than shutdown?

If you go into safe mode (F8 key at boot start) does the same thing happen?

If not, try creating a new account and seeing if the same thing happens from there. Maybe just your account has some corrupted files. Often happens with power cuts.

Are you using any Norton software?

I installed Norton Antivirus once, and my PC startup time went from 40 seconds to three or four minutes. After it started up, I was unable to use any network connections for a further couple of minutes.

It didn't stay on my system very long.

By the way - pulling the power cord out is only going to cause bigger problems sooner or later.

Do you have the 'clear page-file' option set?

http://windowsxp.mvps.org/slowshutdown.htm

The saving and applying setting is the machine & user profiles. If its a local profile e.g on a stand-alone sytem it shouldn't take very long. If its stored on a server then it can take much longer.
If its taking a long time even though its local then check that you haven't got a cluttered desktop and myDocuments folders - the more garbage you have here the longer it will take.
You can also just try deleting your locally stored profile under c:\ Documents and Settings - delete the folder with your account name ( back it up first in case). XP will then create a new default profile when you next log in which should be very fast - but of course you will not have any user defined settings like desktop backgrounds or screensavers.

Problem is, I have XP Media edition on the PC and Media Centre wakes the PC up a 5am just to download a ... wait for it ... VITALLY IMPORTANT tv schedule!??!

Pretty good with that method so I guess there is something buggering up the O/S in normal mode.

I would only install that as a punishment if the PC steps out of line.

Thats disabled but I'll try the Clear Boot procedure as linked from the page. Thanks.

Ricky,
Sounds like a plan. The largest file I have in my USER folder is a NTUSER.DAT file at 4.25MB. Can't do much with it though because XP as locked it and prevented me from viewing it too (with UltraEdit).

Great help so far gang. Thanks indeed.

lol - agreed!