“notifying services that windows is shutting down”

Question

Can’t shutdown Server 2012 R2 VM as it gets stuck on “notifying services that windows is shutting down”

I found out I can kill the lsass.exe task and that will allow it to reboot (not cleanly) but I need to shut down the VM in order to reboot the host but if I kill lsass.exe, it reboots….Won’t shutdown.

I’ve tried stopping and disabling the “system events notification service” but it didn’t seem to matter. Disabling IPv6 didn’t help either.

Answer 1

Verbose logging may help you figure it out.
https://support.microsoft.com/kb/325376

--please don't forget to upvote and Accept as answer if the reply is helpful--

Answer 2

Thanks. Just enabled it. Will resume troubleshooting tomorrow.

Answer 3

Going to do the first reboot with detailed logging enabled shortly. I'll reply back as soon...

Answer 4

No difference, same message "notifying services that windows is shutting down" without any additional info.

https://www.screencast.com/t/Uwmk7YQvQE

UPDATE - Actually, it just rebooted cleanly. I was about to kill lsass.exe but it finally kicked over. Odd as yesterday I left it at that screen for about one hour and it didn't budge. Going to attempt a shutdown next.

Answer 5

Might also try from a clean boot.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/how-to-perform-a-clean-boot-in-windows-da2f9573-6eec-00ad-2f8a-a97a1807f3dd