Maybe 1 time in 10, I click the Shutdown button last thing at night, XP gets to the final shutdown screen, drive activity stops and that's it, machine locks up still on. It's done it on & off since first installed some months back. Apart from that XP is super-stable, no drive errors next startup. Google just shows the problem's not unknown, eg, some Creative drivers can cause it, but no other clues that seem to apply in this case. As said, it only happens occasionally. Board is Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe, Sempron 2600+, latest BIOS and drivers everywhere, using the SoundStorm on-board audio, XP Home SP2. Anybody else come across this and found a solution?
The 3 most common causes for this (in XP) are a large number of temp files in the Windows temp directory and a page file that's located on a badly fragmented partition. Third is IE using the default storage amount for its' temp files. There are dozens of other causes, but most likely one of these will solve it. Solve the first by running disk cleanup or just deleting the contents of the temp directory. The second can be solved by defragmenting. The third by setting IE to use only 1MB for temp file storage and to empty temp internet files when browser is closed....then switch to Firefox. Creating another partition that's just the right size for your page file and moving (recreating really) the page file to the new partition is another option to solve the page file issue. It will rarely become fragmented if it is the only thing on the partition. I personally do this and have never had a problem with shutdown (and I never get those annoying "Windows is increasing the size of your page file" messages either as mine is static). Do this through System properties > Advanced tab > Performance Settings > Advanced tab > Virtual memory > Change. Set the new page file on the new partition with the maximum size slightly less than the available space or make it a static size, then remove the page file from the c drive. Hope this helps. Marty
have to second the "move page file" idea. worked for me. another thing - dont save things to your desktop. if you do, move it to your documents before you shut down. tidy desktops should only have links and shortcuts at most. no files or folders - will make startup and shutdown much smoother.
Ah! ATM I've 42 downloaded files on the desktop, mainly pdf and gif but 45Mb in total, waiting to be moved or scrapped. Must set Firefox to save somewhere else or tidy up more often... Page File is a contiguous 256Mb block on 'D', never seen it get bigger and Win says the rest of that partition is OK for not needing defragging. Only 1 file in Win\Temp, dated today. IE cache is limited to 50Mb, same for Firefox cache. So we have a Prime Suspect, tx. ---------------- Update - culprit was the USB modem (Alcatel Speedtouch 330 frog) drivers - shutdown always OK if I disconnected from the net first, & after upgrading to a router/modem it's never happened since.
