Windows 7 slow shutdown and start

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Hoping for some help on this. My Dell laptop running Windows 7 has suddenly started to take around 4 hours to shut down and the same time to start. Any assistance would be appreciated. For info the last update was on 16/06 and AVG has not found any viruses.
 
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I would try downloading the free (not the premium one) from malwarebytes

http://www.malwarebytes.org/

I used it for years as a stand alone scanner should not conflict with your anti virus as the free one only runs when you start it the premium one runs in the background as I understand it and might cause a conflict with existing security program.

Either use the link or search it out for yourself if you prefer.
 
Could be a hardware issue, if so, most likely a failing hard drive. Backup your important files as soon as possible. Download a disk checking program, I use HDTune Pro http://www.hdtune.com/download.html. (Free fully functional trial) Go to the health tab and check for bad sectors or other error warnings. Windows inbuilt HD test will not find everything thats wrong wheras HDTune will.
 
I agree with tomtown

You should replace your hard drive with and SSD and your restarts and shut downs will literally take seconds, you can get a decent one for below £100.
 
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I agree with tomtown

You should replace your hard drive with and SSD and your restarts and shut downs will literally take seconds, you can get a decent one for below £100.

Good grief!! So with absolutely no idea why it is taking so long to shutdown / start up, you recommend replacing the HDD with an SSD, beggars belief!

this *may* help. It is imperitive that the cause is isolated before taking wild stabs in the dark.
 
I agree with tomtown

You should replace your hard drive with and SSD and your restarts and shut downs will literally take seconds, you can get a decent one for below £100.

Good grief!! So with absolutely no idea why it is taking so long to shutdown / start up, you recommend replacing the HDD with an SSD, beggars belief!

this *may* help. It is imperitive that the cause is isolated before taking wild stabs in the dark.

Good point, yeah there could be problem with the fan or even software issue so it might be a good idea to install a fresh copy of win 7 first.
 
Have you backed up your data yet?

If not, buy some DVDs or CDs, and get started.
 
If you replace your HDD with a SSD, you'll have to re-install Win7 (and have all the trouble of getting the correct validation key for it) Microsoft just won't have it that people upgrade the computer they have and will want you to purchase the validation code. Might as well buy Win8.1 for all the help Microsoft will give you, when re-installing Win7
 
after you have finished backing up your data, you could do a reinstall or repair of Windows on the existing disk, unless you have reason to believe there is actually a hardware fault, it is much more likely to be fked up Windows.
 
Root cause analysis first... only then decide on the appropriate course of action.
 
I would also download and run Spybot Search and Destroy - works well alongside Malware anti-malware bytes as already suggested.

May also be worth running 'msconfig' to see what is running at start-up...let me know if you need any further assistance on this.
 
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