You can press the power button and hold it to force a shut down. If you have too many things running in the background it makes Windows confused and unable to complete the shutdown function. You should edit you start menu to only have the programs open that you need.When you load a program or application it makes a statup option in the start menu to open when you start your computer , that function is not something that is needed since when you want to run an application you can just open it. If you play games a good example of this is Steam and Origin as they both start up and open when the computer is satarted and they are running in the back ground all the time the computer is on and that is not needed.