[Data]

If you have windows XP and are in the waiting room with your XP buddies, all suffering from the slow shut down problem there is a "little known" fix from Microsoft that is worth a try.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=1b286e6d-8912-4e18-b570-42470e2f3582&displaylang=en

[photostill]

Sometimes I've found that slow shutdown can be the results of the heat sink having dust in the fins. A sign of needed a good cleaning. While not always an answer, it is the first place I go look before looking for a software cure.

[Data]

Good advice to keep those fans clean, I like to clean them about 2 or 3 times a year.

[DaveMorton]

Great info, folks!

If I dust off/blow out the innards of my box every other week, does that make me anal? 

Seriously, though. I'm giving the User Profile Hive Cleanup Service a go, and will be checking to see if it helps speed up the shutdown process. I don't shut down/reboot my computer very often, though (I have several different types of servers running on my box [web, FTP, media, TeamSpeak, etc]), so it may take me a while to collect enough data to see a quantifiable difference. But once I figure out some sort of answer, I'll pass on my findings.

[Art]

I have two cans of compressed air mounted in the chassis of my computer. On top I modified the plungers and fitted them with two model airplane servos.

The servos draw power from a modified wall-wart and combined with a low cost arduino board, allow me
to schedule a prescribed time (usually early in the morning after we've all left for work), for it to trigger.
A simple Auto-it script allows for the program scheduling / execution.

I also have diffusers at the ends of the air nozzles allowing a greater dispursion of emmitted air. The result is a very effectively cleaned interior case and components.




I'd love to show you a photo of the setup but that would violate my copyright laws and besides...
I just made up this entire story...but it was fun and made you think! Sorry bout that!

[Freddy]

Bugger, you really had me then, I was going to congratulate you on a wild but brilliant solution 

[DaveMorton]

lol, don't get me started, Art! I've got an old refrigerator kicking around, and some drip sprinkler hose that would probably work quite well together. Hmmm...

[photostill]

Somewhere out in the shed, I have one of those old refridge compressors made into an air compressor with an electric motor. Just never got up the gumption to drag it into the house. Must be 30  years old. lol.

[Data]

You had me going there too Art   

To cool or not to cool?

[photostill]

Much of the BSOD have proven to be memory related. Not all mind you but a goodly portion.

[Data]

Makes sense, there tends to be more memory modules in PC’s than any other component so I guess they would fail more.

From my experience its hardware failure: motherboard, graphics cards, sound cards, or a bad driver call to hardware making windows think the hardware has failed that causes a BSOD. Over heating can cause a hardware failure and then blue screen too.

So yeah, I agree with you photostill.
Its quite possible that the BSOD has been blamed on Windows far to often in the past, I think I might be guilty there.

EDIT: I forgot to put “memory” in my list of hardware,  obviously it should be too, sorry