Can't logoff or shutdown

I'm working on a windows XP Home machine for a friend and for the life of me I can't figure out why he can't logoff or shutdown his sytem without using the powerbutton. I checked and all of the power management software in XP appears to be functioning correctly. He can switch users just not logoff or shutdown. The event log registers an unable to shutdown error message when we atempt this. Any suggestions?

The following article may be of some help to you...

Windows XP Shutdown Troubleshooter

sokay i figured it out. Finally broke down and ran msconfig.exe and started looking at everything windows was doing on startup. Cuz it could shutdown fine in safe mode and diagnostic mode I looked at the services and startup programs. Disabled the Kernel32.dlI and rundlI16.exe programs and everything is working now.

Twyst said:

sokay i figured it out. Finally broke down and ran msconfig.exe and started looking at everything windows was doing on startup. Cuz it could shutdown fine in safe mode and diagnostic mode I looked at the services and startup programs. Disabled the Kernel32.dlI and rundlI16.exe programs and everything is working now.

Click to expand...

Sounds like a virus type thing or spyware. Many times I find that I can't shut down or logoff, so I look in task manager and see some phony programs and shut 'em off and boom, it shuts down. Glad you got everything all sorted out.

Matt

Yeah I was thinking virus as well. Come to find out my friends son had taken the system to a LAN party last weekend and that's when the trouble started. He didn't have the antivirus software working so I'm pretty sure he caught something from one of the other systems there.