windows 7 shutdown was originally very fast (maybe 5 seconds). It has
reached the point where it takes longer to shutdown (about 45
seconds) than to fully boot (about 37 seconds)
This shutdown is when all open windows have been closed and the
"taskhost.exe" process has been manually terminated with task
manager..
Any idea what has happened?
HOW are you shutting down? Were you actually going into sleep mode
before instead of shutting down?
Are you relying on a Sleep key on a multimedia keyboard to do the
"shutdown"? If so, what is the key currently defined to perform? If
using the Power button, go into Power Options to check if the Power
button (which is a soft button in ATX hosts, not a hardwired switch as
used in the old AT-style computers) is defined to sleep or to power
down. Don't know how you are powering down. Don't know if you were
sleeping before and now you are powering down.
Your set of background programs might've changed. You think you've
exited all applications but that only affects visible apps you use, not
the background apps, like services, tray icons, or background jobs that
may have an invisible window or don't even have GUI resources. Start
Windows in its safe mode. Wait for the desktop to get stable, like you
can open Notepad (then exit it). Then test the time to shutdown
(whether that is to go into sleep mode or actually power down). Safe
mode will eliminate non-critical startup programs and services to remove
those as possible interference on shutdown.
Changing how Windows starts up can affect how it shuts down. Just
because you exited the visible apps doesn't mean they have yet exited,
and some may actually crash and leave stub code behind in a process that
is not responsive on a shutdown request. New startup programs or
services that take longer to respond or don't respond at all to an exit
request will slow or halt the shutdown process. If Windows safe mode
reverts you to the quick shutdown that you had before then a startup
program or service is causing the slow shutdown. As an experiment and
with a normal start of Windows (all startup programs and services get
loaded), you could create a shortcut (with elevated privileges) that
runs:
shutdown.exe /s /t 00 /f
where,
/s = Shutdown (versus /r that shuts down and then restarts).
/t = How long to wait upon a prompt to the user who could terminate
the shutdown before the timer expires. Since you want to force
an immediate shutdown, the timer is zeroed to eliminate that wait
for user input.
/f = Forces the OS to kill any running applications without prompting
the user and without waiting for the applications to gracefully
exit. This could result in corrupted data files that were inuse
(still open) by those applications when they got killed.
If you made huge changes in document files that are getting scanned by
Windows Search, that indexing can slow the shutdown. Up to you whether
you want to leave Windows Indexing enabled or not. Just as an example,
maybe you now load a new startup program or start it yourself that logs
tons of events in Windows and Indexing is scanning that huge logfile.
Holding down the Power button for 4 seconds will forcibly remove power
from the computer. It is the brute force method to immediately power
off the computer. Perhaps the Power button can be reconfigured in the
OS to override that emergency method but I've never bothered since there
have been times, like when stuck at a BSOD, that I need to force off the
computer so I can reboot. Hopefully holding down for 4 seconds was not
how you were "shutting down in 5 seconds" before.