Thanks for your post, very helpful! I will try this. However, I wonder since it happens at least half the time I try to shut down is it causing issues within Windows (temp files, unclosed files, cooruption??)? I am running Fusion 1.1.3 on a Macbook Pro with 4GB of memory (2 GB dedicated to Windows). I am running MS Window XP-PRO SP3. My big reason for this is MS Office. I need Outlook with .pst, Visio etc. It appears that when I run Outlook for long periods of time when I shutdown Windows it goes through the shutdown process; saves my settings, closes the network, then "Shutting Down Windows". This is when it just stops. At this point I have been Force Quitting the Application on the Leopard side.
Do you know why this would be happening and can it be avoided?
When you Force Quit VMware Fusion you're only terminating the Fusion UI (Front End Process) and not the actual Virtual Machine with is the vmware-vmx process (Back End Process) and if you reboot the Host at that point your risk corrupting the Virtual Machine's Virtual Hard Drive. Not that you don't risk corrupting the Virtual Machine Guest OS File System when using the method suggested in this thread however I believe there is less chance of corruption do it this way vs. force quitting the Fusion UI and reboot the Host.
As far as why Windows is hanging where it is I certainly do not have enough information about you particular configuration and what all you're doing in both the Host and the Guest and as far as troubleshooting it go well that can be a daunting process however I'd suggest that if you're not already closing each app individually (and by app I mean things that show on the main portion of the Taskbar) before shutting down the Virtual Machine. In addition to closing individual apps on the Taskbar you may want to bring up Task Manager and verify that the OUTLOOK.EXE process has actually terminated. Outlook is know for the GUI disappearing however the rest of Outlook is still running in memory. While you at it you may also want to close some of the processes that are running in the System Tray (area by the clock) before shutting down. Anyway if this is a fairly regular occurrence it will be easier to troubleshoot than a sporadic occurrence and you may need to use MSCONFIG to help in the troubleshooting process by working without any of the unnecessary Startup Items for a while until you can narrow down and isolate a pattern.
