My system is Windows XP.

I rebooted to Safe Mode, did some things at the Command Prompt, and exited. Clicked on Start > Turn Off Computer > Reboot. The system froze at the Shutting Down Windows screen. I had to turn the system off, wait a bit, and turn it back on.

Tried it again and it froze at the same place. This time I waited 5 minutes to be absolutely sure it was frozen and not just taking a long time to restart. Once again I had to turn the system off and back on.

Help! What am I doing wrong?

Jema

Jema, I think they are going to know what you did at the command prompt.
And can you do a system restore to an earlier date?

Yup, what did you do at the command prompt?

You can find many of these shutdown hangs in the Event Viewer. From Control Panel, select Administrative Tools, Event Viewer.

Click Application on the left hand side and scroll down the list of events on the right (all are time stamped).

Thanks all for replying.

Inland, for the first time ever I checked the Event Viewer log a few minutes ago. The last two errors, which are also about the times I tried to reboot from Safe Mode, show the source as "crypt32" and an event number of 8.

That same error shows up on various dates and times throughout the log. Could it be the reason Windows takes so long (close to 2 minutes) to shut down when I need to reboot?

Is it something I should be concerned about and how do I fix it?

By the way, if it means anything, I also checked Services. Cryptographic Services starts automatically as does Remote Procedure Call, which apparently Cryptographic Services depends on.

Thanks for your help.

Winfrey and Draclvr, after I hear back from Inland, if it's still necessary to post (or anyone is curious) what I did in Safe Mode, I'll do so. By the way, what I did there worked as intended in Windows. In case I didn't mention it, this was the first time I've ever used Safe Mode.

Jema

I'm sure Inland will have it covered for you! Never heard of Cryptographic Services...

EDIT: I learn something new here every day. Cryptographic Services and Remote Procedure Call are two integral XP services you should never disable!

See if the following MS Article helps, peruse to the Resolution section and follow the instructions to disable: Update Root Certificates.

Hi Inland,

Is there a link to the MS article you're referring to? If not, what is its title?

Thanks.

Jema

Ummm, yep - Thought I had a link in the post

Event ID 8 is logged in the Application log

Thanks, Inland.

I read the article, unchecked the Update Root Certificates box in Add/Remove Programs / Add/Remove Windows Components, and OKed out.

Restarted the system normally - it seemed to take a little less time to shut down.

When that was finished, rebooted into Safe Mode and opened a Command Prompt window. Since I didn't have anything I wanted to do, I just typed Exit and pressed Enter to close the Command Prompt window.

Tried to reboot and, once again, the system froze at the Windows is shutting down screen.

After I got the system back up, I checked the Event log. There have been no more Error entries since the 2 early yesterday morning, so it seems that problem has been resolved.

BTW, I did an Internet search on "can't reboot from Safe Mode in Windows XP". All of the results were about either how to reboot into Safe Mode or not being able to boot into Safe Mode or Normal Mode - not a single one about not being able to reboot from Safe Mode.

Thanks much for your help so far. If you (or anyone else) have any further suggestions, I will appreciate them.

Jema