I found several forum items about not being able to shutdown or restart Window 7. I am running Windows 7 Home Premium factory installed on a new HP Pavilion dv8 with 8 gig memory. Attempts to shutdown or restart result in an endless hang with the message that task host is waiting for a pgm/process to end. The offending pgm is Task Host itself. Pressing cancel and looking in task manager processes shows two copies of taskhost.exe running. Stop them both and then you can shutdown. I downloaded and installed the hotfix. It did nothing for the problem. I clicked cancel and started task manager and found that there was two taskhost.exe processes running. This after the attempt to shutdown failed. I stopped both processes and then did the shutdown sucessfully. While this is a pain it is better than having to force the system off every time. Need some comment here from MS please. Thanks Gene

Which hotfix have you tried?"A programmer is just a tool which converts caffeine into code" CLIP- Stellvertreter http://www.winvistaside.de/

Taskhost is like svchost. But instead of services, it runs tasks from the Task Scheduler. 'MsCtfMonitor' & 'SystemSoundsService' normally run on every login.

The only one that was there when I followed the link for Wndows 7 and failure to shutdown. It replaced TASKHOST.EXE. It did not work. Thanks. See my append re update to the problem. Gene

This is an update to my problem above. I noticed that there are two copies of TASKHOST.EXE process running. I manually stopped one using taskmanager and then the shutdown works normally. One copy uses 3908K and the other 3492K. I manually stop the first one to obtain a normal shutdown. Gene

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/975777/en-us leads to the fix I applied. Gene

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/975777/en-us leads to the fix I applied. Gene contact MS support again if the fix doesn't work: Contact a Support Professional by Email, Online, or Phone"A programmer is just a tool which converts caffeine into code" CLIP- Stellvertreter http://www.winvistaside.de/

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/975777/en-us leads to the fix I applied. Gene contact MS support again if the fix doesn't work: Contact a Support Professional by Email, Online, or Phone "A programmer is just a tool which converts caffeine into code" CLIP- Stellvertreter http://www.winvistaside.de/ Thanks for your suggestions. The problem with contacting MS is that they want to charge me as windows 7 was installed by the manufacturer (HP). This is a new machine and this failure has been present from day one. HP would replace it but it isn't hardware problem. HP Support suggest that I format and use the recovery process to re-install windows. That is a non starter I would have to re-install al the programs I installed along with the settings, etc. I really think the problem is that there are two copies of taskhost.exe running. I sure wish someone from MS would check this forum and comment on that fact. I had the HP support guy check and his windows 7 machine was only running one copy. This machine has the i7 core with four CPUs, 8 gig memory, 1 Tbyte HD space.Gene

Hi Gene: Did you ever get a solutiono/an answer about your task host issue??? My story is the exact same as yours. Out of the box, Windows 7 pro, 64 bit had intermittent "waiting for tskhst" force shutdown issue. Now it does it pretty much everytime. I too have 2 taskhost,exe processes running. If I delete one it shuts down. Here's the difference in our stories!! I was able to convince MS that they needed to help me (for free) and I have spent over eight (that's right 8!!) hours with LEVEL 3 MS support. You would not believe what that guy has done inside mycomputer.....trying to backtrack and eliminate causes one by one. He believes that he has nailed it down to a defective dvd/cd rom (hardware) and indeed when I disabled it (in device mgr) it shut down correctly a dozen times in a row. Here's the pisser......this issue is a GHOST! I have removed the rom, sent it back to the manufacturer (ZT Systems in NJ) and they are sending me a new one. So with no rom in PC (so obviously disabled) last night I get the same damn force shutdown issue. GRRRRR! I have been struggling with this issue for over 2 weeks. Prior to that I spent 2 wks loading all my new 7 software programs and transferring so much data from old to new computer (accting files, documents, pics, music, etc.....it was a tedious process). So when ZT told me they think I should just reformat, I freaked. Bottom line is ZT thinks it's software and MS thinks it's hardware. Sorry to go on and on. Just wondering if you were able to resolve. I have been with a tier 3 rep (off continent) and he's obviously very smart....but I think I need another brain to check this out. The last thing I want to do is totally reformat (damn!) but I guess I will if we have tried everything else. Did you know there are several others out there with the same problem? I told MS that. I'm not too savvy about forums (how and when communiques post, etc!) I havve saved this page and site. But you can reach me at sisqsterrio@hotmail.com Thanks Terri

Hi Terri, HP support and the support team at COSTCO where I got the PC convinced me that there was a corrupt driver on the machine. I replaced all 200+ drivers on the machine with no help. It did look pretty much like a problem with the graphics driver until I started getting blue screen crashes and sudden (like in less than a second) shutdowns for no reason. I decided that returning the PC or doing a clean install from the recovery partition was going to be about the same effort as both requied me to re-install all my stuff. I did the repair from recovery and that included a format of the C:| partition and full install. The HP recovery manager made that much of it very simple, just watch it do it's thing. It corrected the shutdown problem. BUT! Still was getting the blue screen and after looking at several of the dumps it looked like a problem with the USB hardware, first clue was having the mouse (USB wireless connection) freeze and then later the blue screen. To make a long story short, took the PC back to COSTCO and got full refund even though I was beyond the 90 days they allow for PC's. They would normally just want to repair it but there was no argument, they just took it back and handed me a refund. HP must have had other problems with the Pavilion dv8T machines as you can't buy them anywhere now and they were pretty new with the i7-740 four processor chip. I now have a Sager with the even newer i7-2720 four processor chip on order. I will close this issue as FIXED and ANSWERED as the format and install repaired the not shutting down problem. I would have done it earlier but I didn't fully resolve the problem until last Monday. Gene

I finally found the cause of this problem on my machines. As noted above I have returned the HP machine, mostly for other issues. BUT, the problem with Task Host on that machine and on my replacment, a Sager, was the same. After installing ROXIO Easy Media Creator 9 the problem started on the Sager. Attempted to uninstall but got complaits about a missing OS function and then a complaint about a process that would not stop. Using Task Manager I could not find that number process running but I did find a Roxio process that was NOT part of the uninstall function. I manually stopped that process and then the Retry on the uninstall process worked. Shutdown worked then and has continued to work. Note that attemptes to uninstall Roxio on the HP had failed in the same way but I wasn't able to fix it as I did on the Sager. Mostly due to increased experience looking for clues to the problem cause. Gene

After installing ROXIO Easy Media Creator 9 the problem started on the Sager. So Roxio is the cause for you? Correct? André"A programmer is just a tool which converts caffeine into code" Want to install RSAT on Windows 7 Sp1? Check my HowTo: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=150221

Yes, Roxio was the cause on both systems. Gene

ok, thanks for this usefull information. André"A programmer is just a tool which converts caffeine into code" Want to install RSAT on Windows 7 Sp1? Check my HowTo: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=150221

i am running Win7 Starter. For a couple of weeks i was not able to shutdown my system, until i read this thread. here are the steps i took at an attempt to resolve this issue: 1) kill all taskhost.exe processes found in task manager 2) in cli run shutdown /p /f - /p does not prompt for user response or pop a warning - /f forces all running apps to shutdown Do not use reboot option for this resolution. Upon shutdown i left the system for about a min and powered up my system. logged on with an alternate user profile and shutdown the system normally. powered up my system again and logged on with the initial user profile. again i shutdown the system normally. between shutdowns i confirmed that only one instance of taskhost.exe process was running. i have been able to power down my system five times as one would normally... i hope this helps...