Dear CNET members,

Happy Friday! Sorry I missed you folks last week, I had some troubles with both my wrists and was decommissioned for a while. However, I'm back in the saddle again. So have you folks had a chance to check out the all-new CNET? I hope you have and I really hope you enjoy it, our entire staff has put countless hours and energy into bring you this new experience. If you haven't done so already, after you've soaked into our new site experience for a while, tell us what you think--hate it or love it, go to the top of any CNET page and click the "Send feedback" link and tell us about it, we are all ears. Now let's get right into Victoria's question on why her PC takes so long to shut down.

Well Victoria, after reading many of our member suggestions for you, there can be many factors that could be causing your Windows system to shut down so slowly. It can range from your PC being infected with viruses/spyware and having an overly defragmented drive, to an excessive amount of programs running in the background, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. The major reasons why PCs will eventually take longer to shut down is simply because more programs in the background need to be ended before the operating system can completely shut down. And one quick solution for that is to minimize clutter and unnecessary programs on your PC, but it may not be as simple as that. So give all the answers a read, start with the simple recommended tasks, and see if there are any improvements. If not, go forward from there. I have selected a few answers to get you started in the Q&A section.

For those of you who suggested completely wiping your hard drive clean and reinstalling Windows, I would keep this option as a last resort. While this is a completely valid method of ridding yourself of many Windows problems, unless you are up to the task and know exactly what you are doing, it can be a daunting task. If you have any more suggestions or advice for Victoria, please swing on by and post your suggestions in the discussion thread. Thanks everyone and have a great weekend!

Featured member solutions
for last week's question:

  "Why does my computer take so long to shut down."
-- Submitted by: Ancient-One

  "Why shutdown is slow"
-- Submitted by: Ancient-One

  "Shutdown problems"
-- Submitted by: Ankit B.

  "Long shutdown times."
-- Submitted by: Alain Martel1

 Read all member contributions

 Thanks to all who contributed!