Why can't Windows shut down promptly?
Found on CNet News on Friday, 27 March 2009
I realize that sometimes there is a bit of housekeeping to do in the form of closing files but--give me a break--should that really have to take up to five minutes? And there have been countless times in my experience when it simply never shuts down, forcing me to hold the power button for several seconds. I've even had laptops that were so stubborn that I had to remove the battery to turn them off.
Sometimes the program just hangs there forever, sometimes it quits after a random period of time and sometimes the entire computer just crashes.
Now give me a break too. Larry Magid calls himself a leading Internet safety advocate, but it seems to be impossible for him to handle a computer. If you pay a little attention and think before installing every EXE you'll find online, even Windows will actually run pretty well. My Windows desktop shuts down in less than half a minute (and there are lots of background tasks running). There's a BSOD about once a year and rare random freezes are related to 3rd party software.