Why does Windows take so long to shut down?
Windows Vista does a better job than XP terminating programs when you have left them open after clicking shut down, but there still may be other reasons why shut down is slow. There is a feature in the Control Panel that allows you to view the programs that are slowing down your shut down time.
1) First, you want to access your Control Panel. Then proceed to Performance Information and Tools.
Modern View:
Classic View:
2) Next, click on Advanced Tools in the navigation bar.
3) You should see a screen similar to the one below.
Try to look for Performance Issues (below) near the top of the screen. If you don’t see any issues, Vista hasn’t detected any issues when shutting down your PC.
4) By clicking on the link, a window will pop-up, identifying the problem in long shut-down times.
Looks like I don’t have to wait 113 seconds before shutting down my computer. 
March 29th, 2008 at 4:50 am
[...] Why does Windows take so long to shut down? [...]
April 20th, 2008 at 10:23 pm
Very informitive, my pc, when it goes into shutdown (there’s no hardware conflict), but after it leaves the main user area, it just sits there after the monitor goes dorment.
July 15th, 2008 at 5:47 pm
I find everything that Vista told me was a problem, one not to be a problem. & secondly one of the programes I don’t even use anymore…It’s been long deleted…?
It seems pointless, ish…
July 29th, 2008 at 3:37 am
[...] [...]
August 23rd, 2008 at 4:53 pm
Is there an other way…..
September 3rd, 2008 at 5:39 pm
Another thing that may help to shut down quicker-ish, is to type in the run box [Windows + R], or into a command prompt, your choice.
shutdown -f -s
the “-f” is the force option, the “-s” is shutdown, for a restart type “-r”.
It still takes a while but at least you have given the command to force the closure of running programmes!!!
Vista is Microsoft, & Microsoft let the end user do all the ironing of bugs, C’est la vie.
I recently thought of a great Microsoft slogan.
“Vista, How do you cope?”
I hope this helps someone.
January 15th, 2009 at 4:35 am
Ironic that mine says it is Internet Explorer, 186.4 seconds.
January 25th, 2009 at 2:03 pm
So, maybe Vista will tell me what programs it is not shutting down quickly and how much time it spends not shutting them down. What I want to know is how to make Windows shut down right away even if Word.exe (or whatever) is still open.
The respondent Menthol offered a commandline that may shut down the machine more rapidly. That is helpful.
January 25th, 2009 at 2:51 pm
Being extremely lazy, I wanted to create a “restart” icon and a “shutdown” icon on my desktop, so I could just grunt-point-and-click and have it happen, fast. I followed Menthol’s lead and created two .bat files restart.bat and shutdown.bat which I saved in C:\b\bin , my favorite programs folder. Then, in Windows Exploder, I right-button dragged and dropped each of these .bat files, one at at time, to my desktop and there created shortcuts, which appear as icons on the desktop.
Now, when I want to shut down, I doubleclick the shutdown.bat shortcut icon. When I want to restart, I doubleclick the restart.bat icon. I wouldn’t call it quick, but it does happen in a minute or two, which vastly improves on my earlier experience.
Here are the contents of the two .bat files:
restart.bat:
———————cut here————————
C:\WINDOWS\System32\shutdown.exe -f -r
———————cut here————————
shutdown.bat
———————cut here————————
C:\WINDOWS\System32\shutdown.exe -f -s
———————cut here————————
March 11th, 2009 at 7:49 pm
Try turning off windows defender. Use something else for protection. I changed because I get virus and spyware protection from my ISP. After I turned off defender - my machine shuts down faster that XP (10 seconds). Don’t try to delete the prohram - its apparently P/O Vista. Just turn it off. It worked for me.