and doesn't shut down. It starts to close, then never completes it. Even when I go to sign on the next morning, it is still closing. So I hold down the button until it shuts off. When I attempt to restart, I get the black screen that tells me windows did not close normally and how do I want it to start (safe mode, etc). I click start windows normally and it starts.

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beauty is in the eyes of the beer holder.

Howdy,

There could be several things. One thing you can do before you shut down (First close all open applications). Right-Click a blank area on the Task Bar. Then chose Task Manager. Look on both the applications and processes tabs. What you want to look for is something that is running more than once.
For example, I saw a machine running 25+ instances of the virus scanner. We had to uninstall the virus scanner and re-install it. But after that, only 1 instance started, and every shutdown would go normally.

But If you see something running x times (avoiding SVCHOST.EXE), Click on them, and chose END PROCESS, and YES in the box that pops up. Once all the instances of a rogue application have been ended, it's easier to unistall them in the ADD/REMOVE SOFTWARE panel (on the control panel).

Give that a try, and if it's not the case (or even if it is), let us know. We can ask more questions and try to help in other ways.

ok, I checked task manager but did not find any multiple open programs that you spoke of. Found a lot of things in the startup that didn't need to be there so went to services and stopped them from automatic startup. But didn't help my shutdown problem.

__________________
beauty is in the eyes of the beer holder.