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The machine starts up just fine and I can apparently do most of what I need to do; but cannot shut down.
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Presumably you are currently turning it off with the power button?
Have you tried right clicking the start button and shutting down from the extended menu?
You can also shut down from a command prompt - "shutdown /s".
There are a few other methods listed here:
Windows 10 not shutting down is a fairly common problem.
The usual first steps to sorting it out are:
1- Boot into safe mode and disable/reset the 'Fast startup' feature which can cause this problem.
(Quick way to safe mode in Win 10 is to click the power button on the login screen and then hold down shift while clicking restart).
or
2- Run the Windows troubleshooter.
or
3- Scan for and repair any problem with the file systems using "sfc /scanow" in a command window.
I tried all the shutdown tricks; FYI: been working Windows OS since 1987; I've become
pretty good at troubleshooting, etc.
As all shutdown attempts yield the spinning dots, the power button is the only way I can kill the OS
to start again. I allowed the shutdown process to go for over an hour.
Each time I come back up, I check taskman and the partition utility. Neither show any indication of
a valid disk controller driver. Part util just hangs then eventually dies indicating it cannot connect to
the virtual disk service. I did not record the error in the dialog that appeared; suffice it to say, I allowed
CCleaner to send the report in hopes Piriform could analyze it and give me a course of action.
MTA, g'day back to ya mayte! Yes, I clicked analyze. The only button available to start the analysis process.
Last night, I let windows stay in the shutdown mode while I went to bed. I awoke to a screen indicating
windows couldn't shut down successfully. I continued on that screen, the box bounced; and whaaaala,
when the OS came up, I had my disk drivers. All functionality returned.
I cannot explain what happened with CCleaner, but Windows eventually corrected the problem all on its own.
Since you've been doing "bad shutdowns" as a workaround it might be worth while to run ChkDsk on your hard disks, even any secondary hard disks if you have any installed in the system.
Windows 10 does seem to recognise these kinds of problems eventually, but it takes it's own sweet time to notice something is wrong in the first place, then more time fixing it.
I'm thinking that it was an issue with Win10's method of shutting down with Fast-Startup ( a combination of hibernate and shut-down).
This will save an image of your loaded kernel and drivers to disk on shutdown so that they load faster on the next boot.
Looks like it was trying to write information about those drivers from ram to disk, but because they weren't loaded in ram couldn't find the information to write and so hung.
Once the driver loading was working correctly, problem solved.
(Wallacemd, I realise you probably already know that but it may be useful for others reading this thread in the future).