Vista won't shut down

[JohnnyGuitar]

My Vista refuses to shut down. When I select shut down as my desired option Vista performs a restart and then claims "Windows has recovered from an unexpected shut down" and offers "click here for a solution". When I "click here" the time bar appears for about 20 seconds and then the wizard just disappears and nothing else happens. I can then use Vista as normal but when I want to shut down the same thing happens again. Please can anyone help because my only was of shutting down at the moment is to hold down the power button!

[PapaBear]

Johnny - is this a factory installation with a recovery partition or a clean install/upgrade with the install DVD or was this upgraded from within XP using the upgrade DVD?

[JohnnyGuitar]

Thanks for relying PapaBear.
This Vista is a factory installation of Vista Home Premium by Dell on a Dell Inspiron Laptop.

[PapaBear]

In the future, it would help if you would post the specific model, as many may have different methods of accessing the recovery partition from within Vista.

The first thing we can try which may or may not work is to boot into the Safe Mode. As soon as the POST screen (initial screen with the F key options at the bottom) goes to a black screen, start hitting the F8 key. This will bring up a menu with various options (of course if your forcing a shutdown, you may go to this menu anyway) and just take the first Safe Mode option. This will open an ugly desktop, but everything should be there. After it stabilizes see if the normal shutdown works. If it does, then restart the machine normally and then see if you can do a normal shutdown.

Please post back with the results.

[JohnnyGuitar]

Dear PapaBear

Thank you for your prompt help and apologies for my tardy reply. Before trying your suggestion, I tried unplugging the network connection, leaving the wireless connection on. Result - a normal shut down. I have checked to ensure that no devices are set to wake the computer.

I recall a similar problem long ago with my company's Windows '98, which refused to shut down when connected to a wired network. My company eventually found or developed a patch which solved the problem. Reading around, it seems that Vista has problems with some network drivers. I have tried updating the driver but Vista says no updates are available. Do you know of anywhere I could get a driver that works properly with Vista? The network adapters are identified as:

Wired: Broadcom 440x 10/100 Integrated Controller

Wireless: Intel Pro/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection

The computer details are:

Dell Inspiron I6400
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU T5300@ 1.73 GHz 1.73 GHz
1022 MB Ram
32bit operating system

[PapaBear]

It looks as though you have narrowed down the possibilities. Is there a special reason you have both the ethernet and wireless active at the same time?

Would you please turn of the wireless, turn off the machine and then reconnect the ethernet cable, and then re-boot. (While it is possible to hot connect, I think the best way is to let the OS find the connection on boot).

We need to determine whether it's just the ethernet or whether there is an interaction between the two when both are active at the same time.

Please post back with the results.