The User Hive, you say? Sounds something out of Resident Evil, at first hand. However, when this User Hive meets a service grasping at the registry during shutdown, together they make the tedious slowdown at reboot or shutdown after installing SP2 on Windows XP.
A User Hive in Microsoft dialect is a “hive” that is simply referred to as your User Profile. Your User Profile is the Username and/or Password that you use to log into your operating system (OS), in which My Documents, My Shared Files and other user dependant settings are saved. Normally before the invasion SP2, when you powered down your machine, the user profile dismounted, and the computer closed down or rebooted. However since the SP2 “upgrade” has been released, in my personal experience I have seen 34 computers to date with this problem. This is more of an annoyance, than a critical problem, as it logs every time you reboot/shutdown your computer with a critical error log, and painfully slows down the speed of shutdown/reboot to mention as well.
The error log created is discoverable in:
Administrator Profile, Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Event Viewer >Application
Searching within the never-ending list, if you suffer from this problem, the error log will resemble below:
Warning – Date – Time – Userenv – None – 1517 – System – Computer Net Name
After researching on Microsoft’s Support Center, and clicking many irrelevant links about this issue, and article titles that Microsoft claims that after the first restart, “The event occurs if a program or service has the Registry open while Windows XP is logging off.” Also Microsoft claims that “You do not have to do anything. You can ignore the warning.” Perhaps assumable for the first restart after installing Windows XP but not a reoccurring error log event, day in and day out? And finally “This behaviour is by design.” Makes me wonder, did they design the reoccurring error in Windows XP SP2, or are they referring to the “first restart” clause? No one will ever know.
After identifying what caused the profile to unload, I was baffled that instead of some “satanic and spy ware related non-Microsoft” program causing this to happen, it was the svchost.exe itself, causing the User Hive to not properly close, in which the file is part of the Windows XP OS. It seems that SP2 has caused svchost.exe to continually read the User Hive registry, for some apparent reason during shutdown.
To remove this reoccurring error, you must install a User Profile Hive Cleanup Service. The UPHCS closes programs that are trying to save to the registry, and shuts the computer down like it did before SP2 strangled XP with its dirty hands, so to speak. You can download the Service from Microsoft here.
Installing is easy, however remember to download the UPHClean-Setup.msi, as the .exe required to unpack and do things manually. The .msi is an installer, so it’s less of a hassle and it’s automated. This installs into the directory specified, and places a registration into the ‘Add/Remove Programs” list. Automatically it will run when you chose either Shutdown or Restart ensuring that your computer shuts down with optimum speed and most importantly, flawlessly. Every time there is an application or service using the User Hive registry during shutdown, it will log a non-warning event in Event Viewer > Application. Thus by installing this service, you will have protection from any other malicious programs causing the computer to have an improper shutdown by reading the User Hive registry. It’s a handy tool, and an important one when in the wrath of Microsoft domination, your computer must be safe at all costs.
