Unable to shut off computer since recent Avast 9 update in XP.

[EmoHobo]

What happens is I click restart and nothing happens then after several minutes it says that ctfmon.exe has become inactive and it begins to shutdown, however it never goes past the blue screen that says "logging off..."  This never happened at all until I updated to Avast 9.  Virus Scans came back clean and I'm unsure how to prevent it from doing this because it's very annoying.

Edit: Disabling ctfmon.exe seemed to fixed the issue, as I rarely use alternative input methods, I see no reason to have it enabled.

[Eddy]

Give this a try: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/282599

[EmoHobo]

Give this a try: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/282599

Appreciate the link, but I imagine ctfmon.exe did not like avast 9 or the other way around because disabling ctfmon cleared the issue up.

[Eddy]

Personally I have not problems with avast/ctfmon/xp. But I do not have MS-Office installed. I use OpenOffice. It looks to me the problem is how MS-Office is using ctfmon.

[EmoHobo]

Yeah, I haven't had MS Office installed on this computer in years, probably why it's having an issue, but before the install of Avast 9 there was no issue, but it doesn't matter, I never use ctfmon's features so I have no issue disabling to continue to have Avast's great service.

[Canopus]

Thanks for this. I noticed the other day that I was beginning to have problems with XP shutting down after updating Avast program and that ctfmon seemed to be causing this as it failed to close. I've now disabled it and hope that resolves the issue.

[DavidR]

I don't have Office XP installer either, but I do have an even earlier Office 97 installed with only Word and Excel installed.

So the instructions on that KB don't match up as there is no MS Office entry in add remove programs only entries for Excel and Word. When trying it for the excel requests the CD to continue and there is no Maintenance Mode Options dialog box, but there is a Maintenance dialog. But as this is for excel there is no 'Office Shared Features' option.

The control Panel options mentioned in the KB282599 don't match my XP Pro control panel, so there doesn't appear to be a tidy way in which to shout down these options. But this http://support.microsoft.com/kb/313176/EN-US gives an alternative way to disable ctfmon.exe, but there are no end of dire warnings about disabling ctfmon, so many won't want to go down this path.

Not to mention, that for every user that is effected by this issue to have to manually do something, that quite frankly would scare the pants of most users isn't acceptable.

[Canopus]

Simple way, Start > Run and type in msconfig and hit OK. Go to Startup tab and look for ctfmon and uncheck it. To make sure it doesn't run go to Control Panel > Regional and Language options, then Language tab and click on Details button then go to Advanced tab and check Turn of advanced text services and OK out. Reboot computer and ctfmon will no longer start up. I don't think this is too complicated even for unsophisticated users and is quite safe. Everything can be undone easily if at some future date you need advanced text service for MS Office

[DavidR]

There should be no need to uncheck it in msconfig, it isn't in my msconfig listing, so presumably taking the other actions removes it.

[EmoHobo]

I just used CCleaner, pretty lazy of me, but that worked.

[Canopus]

I actually use the old versi8on of Spybot S&D to alter Startup which is much more efficient to the conventional Windows procedure, but, above is the long Winded Windows way which is best to learn before taking short cuts

[Canopus]

There should be no need to uncheck it in msconfig, it isn't in my msconfig listing, so presumably taking the other actions removes it.

Sorry, but, you can only say that for yourself. Many people have it checked in msconfig which is why it starts up. If one has it checked in msconfig then one "needs" to uncheck it to stop it starting up on boot. I think you meant to write "I don't need to uncheck it in msconfig as it's not there for me."

[Eddy]

Personally, I just remove the entry from the registry directly.

[DavidR]

There should be no need to uncheck it in msconfig, it isn't in my msconfig listing, so presumably taking the other actions removes it.

Sorry, but, you can only say that for yourself. Many people have it checked in msconfig which is why it starts up. If one has it checked in msconfig then one "needs" to uncheck it to stop it starting up on boot. I think you meant to write "I don't need to uncheck it in msconfig as it's not there for me."

Well that cuts both ways, as you could not say what is in other users msconfig listing is going to be the same as yours.

[DavidR]

Personally, I just remove the entry from the registry directly.

But many people won't want to be messing with their registry and the real question is why should they have to, shouldn't the ultimate fix come from avast and so far we have seen no avast input on this.

Follow up on my previous post Reply #6:
I tried to uninstall Alternative User Input as outlined in the KB Eddy gave, but none of the settings matched my system, it it refers to MS Office XP, which I don't have.

So I tried the "For additional information about how to remove CTFMon.exe, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: 313176" link in the first KB article.

I then followed the additional information about how to remove CTFMon.exe, and turn off 'advanced text services.' This does ultimately disable ctfmon.exe, as A) WinPatrol Plus indicated on this change and B) was no longer listed in the task manager process list.

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Well long story short, after all of this when I came to shutdown last night, the dreaded slow shutdown in excess of 5 minutes happened again.

So does this work or was it a bit of a fluke and the issue remains intermittent rather than fixed, for me the jury is still out. It could be that this process doesn't fully remove this as there are many references to ctfmon.exe in the registry. I will remove those and see if that resolves it after I have rebooted a couple of times.