SBS 2008 Slow Shutdown

Let me be clear from the start that I am not claiming credit for this; That goes to a chap called Gordon Carlisle who posted this solution to SBS 2008 slow shutdown in his own blog a while ago.  I'm just repeating it because it is so useful and it has helped me.

Consultants like myself often bemoan the fact that some SBS 2008 installations take an age to reboot. In my experience, taking 10 minutes to shutdown is not unusual.  I knew that it was Exchange causing the problem but had not realised the solution was so simple.  All you need to do is add a script to shutdown in group policy that will shutdown Exchange first.

First create a file named Exchstop.cmd and save it to C:\Windows\Exchstop.cmd. In this file needs to be the following.

net stop msexchangeadtopology /y
net stop msftesql-exchange /y
net stop msexchangeis /y
net stop msexchangesa /y
net stop iisadmin /y


Now in the Default Domain Controller Policy go to

Computer Configuration > Policies > Windows Setting > Scripts > Shutdown

Click Add and browse to c:\windows\Exchstop.cmd

Click OK

Now see how fast your server shuts down.