Windows 7 explorer.exe won't allow shutdown

[Ldog]

I have a brand new HP laptop for a month now that came with Windows 7. The past 2 days when I try and shut it down I get an error the says explorer.exe is still running and I have to force quit the application to get the laptop to shut down. No browsers are open. Any ideas how to get rid of this error?

 

[Saltgrass]

Do you know if anything is running in the background that won't let it shutdown? Any chance some utility is doing a scan of some type? Try giving it more time possibly.

There is nothing on the HP site about this?

Have you checked the Event Viewer to see if any error or warning messages are shown?

If you can't find it, you might try to use msconfig.exe to keep some programs from starting on boot for testing purposes. You might also use Task manager to try shutting down individual services before you do a full shutdown to see it that might allow the shutdown to proceed.