Windows takes 10 minutes to shutdown!

[oryx]

My wife's laptop which belongs to her employer takes 10 minutes to shutdown. It makes installing updates where you have to reboot a real pain. I am unable to have any effect on the shutdown time, despite doing a number of things.

Computer: Dell Latitude e6400 with 4GB ram intel core 2 duo P8600
OS: Windows XP Professional SP3

What I have done to resolve the problem (without any effect)

Scanned for malware. Malwarebytes found two infections and cleaned them. Scanned again with Malwarebytes and came up clean. Also ran Kaspersky AV which came up clean.

Ran Dell Diagnostics from boot menu. It reported the optical drive as failed, so I disabled it in Windows. Device manager shows no problems otherwise.

Ran Chkdsk /f which I think reported no errors.

Ran Data Lifeguard full scan on hard drive, no errors.

Made sure the page file wasn't being cleared on shutdown. Research identified this a potential cause of slow shutdown.

Installed User profile cleanup service UPHClean also identified as a potential cause of slow shutdown.

Disabled non essential system startups. It sped up the boot process, but not the shutdown process. Booting and shutting down in safe mode is not slow.

I feel there must be some kind of hanging program or service and have checked the error logs, but I don't see anything there that would identify it.

I've run out of ideas. Can anyone help?

[glc]

Have you tried physically ejecting the optical drive?

[rjfvillarosa]

Most laptop optical drives can be physically removed from the laptop quite easily by removing a single securing screw on the bottom of the case.

If you are confident enough you can alter the "KILLSERVICE" value in the registry to shut down XP faster.

[Force Flow]

Are there any error messages in the event logs?

[jdeb]

Originally Posted by Force Flow Are there any error messages in the event logs?

That's what I would be looking for. Those are outstanding laptops.

[oryx]

The optical drive has no media in it. Is it being suggested that I physically remove the drive to see if it is causing the slow shutdown?

I have been looking at the event log. There are no warnings or errors being reported at the time the system is shutting down. I extracted all of today's system and application errors and warnings but they're in .evl format and I don't know how to make them readable here.

One piece of information I forgot in my original post was that the system hangs on the screen that says logging off. When it gets by that, the shutdown proceeds normally. The same 10 minute delay happens trying to log off and log in as a new user.