Vista hangs during (before) shutdown?

[itasor]

I have a strange problem with my ThinkPad T61 running Vista.

If I boot it up, use it for a little while (like 10 minutes), and then shut it down, it flashes to what looks like the "Shutting down" screen (without the words "Shutting down...", and then QUICKLY to a blank desktop background and stays like this for almost 8 minutes. Then, it changes to the "Shutting down..." screen and turns off normally.

If I boot it up and use it for a long time (like 30-45 minutes), and then shut it down, it flashes to the same "Shutting down" screen (without the words "Shutting down..."), and then QUICKLY to a blank desktop background, then IMMEDIATELY it goes right to the "Shutting down..." screen and shuts down no problem.

This leads me to believe something begins running when it's first turned on, and shutting it down before it can finish isn't working. The problem is that I cannot figure out what is running.

I have disabled a bunch of services (mostly ThinkPad utilities) with no success. This is a clean copy of Vista with only Symantec Endpoint Protection, Office 2007, and Ad-Aware installed.

Any suggestions on what could be running or causing this issue?

Thanks!

[Miller88]

What processes are running before you go to shutdown?

[Marin85]

I would look for some kind of software conflict between Ad-Aware and Symantec. Try to uninstall Ad-aware and see if the problem disappears. If so, try then to reinstall it and see again if the problem appears. If you still have the problem after uninstalling Ad-Aware, try to uninstall Symantec and see what happens.

Cheers

Marin