hello guys!! I just encountered the weirdest problem ever. I'm was reformatting this laptop. I install everything using my USB external HDD. When Im done installing, of course I safely remove my USB external HDD then restart the PC. There is where my problem arise the PC wont continue shutting down. It just stops on "Windows is shutting donw..." message and just stayed like that and nothing is happening.I just pressed the power button for about a few seconds to turn the laptop off. I noticed that throughout my installation my external HDD was connected and I never had any problem shutting down or restarting the PC. I then inserted again my external HDD and tried to shut the pc down.. then whoala!! It did shuts down. Whenever I remove my external HDD, the PC wont shutdown.. any suggestion guys. I already tried removing some of the software which I suspect causing the problem but it didnt work. The only thing that is working is when the external drive is connected before doing a shutdown. weird huh!! any suggestions?Thanks

Try copying the shutdown.exe file from your external hdd and copying it into the laptop. I think the XP default file path is C://windows/system32/shutdown.exe I'm not sure if this will work as I think the laptop might be looking for the shutdown executable in your external hdd and when it's not plugged can't run it. Have a look here for a windows xp shutdown trouble shooter: http://aumha.org/win5/a/shtdwnxp.php Near the bottom of the page there is a registry patch (see line: “ShutNTdown” REGISTRY PATCH) but as always exercise caution and always back the registry up before trialling.

If all else fails, and you are comfortable working with the Registry. You might try searching the Registry for any references to the external drive. I'm not too sure what you would do when you find one or more, but deletion or re-routing might be something to consider.