Forcing shut down in Windows 7

[anken]

Hi, about 2 weeks ago the Win7(Home Premium 64bit) shutdown procedure is taking a lot longer. At the end there is a message which is on the screen only a split second and I'm unable to read all of it.
It says something about having to force a shutdown.
I have always closed all applications before shutting down and now also checked with Task Manager which shows that nothing is running. Yet, I still have this problem. Have suspected Google Chrome and uninstalled it but still have this problem. My question:
Is there some folder to check if anything is still running before shutting down so that I could trace the program and delete it?
Has anybody had this problem?
I would appreciate any suggestions. Thanks in advance, Ann

 

[noreaster]

Sometimes if an application takes longer than expected to close upon shutting down (Windows will usually list the program in question) Windows will put a message on the screen asking if you want to force shutdown (meaning the shutdown will proceed even if the application didn't close and thus you may lose/corrupt data); however, if the program does close on its own the window will close. What it sounds like to me is that you have a program that takes longer to close than Windows wants it to, but it does close on its own given a second longer.

If I am understanding what you asked, the above situation is no more than a slight annoyance and should not be concerning. If I did not understand and you actually have to click "force a shutdown" then you may have an unresponsive program and may want to reinstall it.

 

[anken]

Thank you for your answer, noreaster.
Yes, it's just an annoyance but it didn't start to happen until 2 weeks ago and I don't remember installing anything new. Yes, Windows will close down on it's own after a while.
I just thought that there might be some kind of folder to look in (aside from the Task Manager) to see what might still be running.
Yes, I can live with it....As I said, I just wonder what might cause the slow shut down now and would like to get to the bottom of it.