Windows 7 won't shut down

[barnabas1969]

Hi Folks,

I've recently begun to notice a strange behavior on my HTPC. See this post for hardware details.

Maybe once or twice a week, I see a behavior when I try to watch a copy-protected recording. When I choose to play the recording, the spinning circle appears on the screen for 15 seconds or more, and then it finally begins to play the recording. However, the playback is choppy... it pauses playback multiple times per second.

If I try to watch a non-copy-protected recording, the playback works fine.

The only way I've found to remedy the problem is to reboot the PC. However, when this problem occurs, the PC won't shutdown normally. I must either press-and-hold the power button, or disconnect power from the PC (the PC does not have a "reset" button).

At any other time (except when this odd problem occurs when trying to play a copy-protected recording), the PC reboots (or shutdown) normally.

I'm not sure what to do from here. I've looked at the Windows Event Viewer - Applications and Services Logs -> Microsoft -> Windows -> Diagnostics-Performance... and I don't see anything of value there.

Can anyone here help me figure out...

1) Why doesn't the PC want to shutdown/reboot after this happens?
2) Why copy-protected recordings won't play normally until I reboot?

I think the answer to #1 will lead to #2.

If you can help me troubleshoot the reason why the PC won't shutdown normally when this problem occurs, I think the data will lead to the initial problem that prevents playback of copy-protected recordings.

Thanks in advance for your suggestions.

[CyberSimian]

The only way I've found to remedy the problem is to reboot the PC. However, when this problem occurs, the PC won't shutdown normally. I must either press-and-hold the power button, or disconnect power from the PC (the PC does not have a "reset" button).

A problem with one of your hard disks, perhaps?

Some months ago I had a problem with one of my USB disks. I was using the "safely disconnect" procedure prior to powering down the disk, but the dialogue never completed. Eventually I became impatient and pressed CTRL-ALT-DEL to bring up the Task Manager so that I could force a shutdown. But the shutdown never completed either. After a further long wait I decided to use the "press and hold" procedure on the power button. That worked, but after I had rebooted, CHKDSK-ed all of the disks, and finally powered up the USB disk, Windows claimed that it was unformatted and asked if I wanted to format it! I declined the invitation and was able to recover all of the recordings using the RECUVA tool (the disk wasn't really unformatted, but evidently some field(s) in the disk header had become corrupted).

There appear to be some situations where Windows enters an unlimited wait state waiting for something to respond, and certain types of disk error seem to be one of those situations.

-- from CyberSimian in the UK

[barnabas1969]

That's an interesting idea. I'll try disconnecting the external 2TB drive to see if it makes a difference. Recently, I disconnected the external drive to use it on another PC so that I could save some videos which were created as part of a covert surveillance of an automobile dealership (my activity was commissioned by the automobile manufacturer to assess the dealership's sales practices).

I re-connected the external drive to my HTPC later that same day. The next time the HTPC booted, it could not find the NT loader. Somehow, the boot order had been changed in BIOS so that the external drive was the primary boot device. I changed the boot order so that the internal SSD was the primary boot device, and all was well. I didn't think this was relevant to my problem... but I'll try disconnecting the external drive for a week or two to see if the problem goes away.

The SMART data indicates that all of my drives are healthy, and there are no events in the event log which indicate that there has been a read/write failure.

Until now, I've been leaning toward a video driver issue. I know that certain versions of nVidia and ATI drivers don't work well with copy-protected and/or 29/59 content. I was hoping that someone would come along and tell me which version of the Intel drivers to use for Media Center.

I'll try disconnecting the external hard drive. I don't use it very often. It mostly contains ISO files which were ripped from 3D Bluray movies. It's a Samsung "Story" drive, model HX-DU020EB/A62. I bought it on-sale in July 2012 for $89.99, which was a very good price at the time... and it never caused a problem on my old HTPC.

[IownFIVEechos]

I would have bet it was the video drivers etc.. Did the drive removal work so far? I get the same type of experience but it takes awhile into a copy protected file, sometimes halfway through a movie then flicker flicker black screen crash. I am about to replace the system with a Geforce GT640 2GB. Anyone have issues with that video board and the video bug?

[barnabas1969]

I checked the video driver version, and it's the same one I installed when I first built the system. This problem did not exist for the first couple of months. It hasn't happened since I disconnected the external drive, but it doesn't happen very often... so I need to wait a while longer.