Annoying laptop problem?

Question

My laptop takes several minutes in order to shut down. It gets irritating having to sit and wait. What might be causing it to take so long?

Answer 1

Most likely it is some program that is not shutting down in a timely manner.  (every program THINKS it needs to install some stupid "start bar" icon... printers, AV,(well, in that case it probably does.) music players, adobe acrobat, winzip, scanners, etc. etc.  The list goes on and on.  Each of those things that start up during the boot procedure also have to shut down in an orderly fashion when you turn the computer off.  To compound the problem, all those items starting up automatically are probably pushing your RAM usage over the "physical" amount you have, creating large swap files, slowing your system even more.  Each program, as it shuts down, has to move itself back into physical ram, the swap file cleared of it's data, and the next program starts to do the same.

Try going to START, RUN, then type in msconfig and click the OK button.  It should bring up a configuration utility that will allow you to pick and choose what programs you think you need to start up automatically when the system starts.  You can clear checkboxes for stuff you don't need running and likely speed up your system by a great deal.

I'd also suggest cleaning out your temporary files with Cleanup! from http://www.stevengould.org  That may (or may not) help a great deal also.

If you are running Norton antivirus, seriously consider switching to a fast/efficient/highly accurate AV product like NOD32 from http://www.eset.com  There probably isn't a program in in the world that is "popular" that will slow a system down more than Norton.

Answer 2

are you shutting down all programs before you turn off the laptop?  

Answer 3

Well there's a couple little tricks you can do to speed up boot times and shut down times. For one, most laptops come with a whole wack of useless software that will load on startup. Now what you can do is eliminate the things you don't need.

a) If you have vista.. go to control panel... and under "Programs" click "change startup programs". Then look for things you don't need.

b) Click start, and in the search box type "msconfig" and press enter. Then go to the "Startup" tab and see what you don't need.

Good Luck.