I am booting Windows 8.1 Professional 64-bit off an SSD (specifically, a 128GB ADATA SP900), and while it boots up incredibly fast, it also takes an obscenely long time to shut-down. The time to go from shut-off to log-in screen is less than 20 seconds (perhaps even as low as 10), whereas it takes minutes and minutes to shut down (perhaps even as long as 10 minutes; I'm afraid I haven't had the patience to time it).
Any idea as to why the shut-down time would be abnormally long even though the start-up time is quite fast (as one expects with an SSD)?
Unfortunately, for a problem such as this, I'm not quite sure what information will be relevant to troubleshooting the problem, so please let me know anything that might be useful and I will respond in the comments. Here, however, are my specs.
EDIT: I found a partial solution. I opened the command prompt with administrator privileges and ran the command powercfg /hibernate on. Then, under Control Panel\Hardware and Sound\Power Options\System Settings in the Control Panel, under the heading "Shutdown settings", I now saw a check-box labeled "Turn on fast startup (recommended)".
I tested both shutting-down and restarting with this box checked and unchecked. Qualitatively anyways, I experienced the same behavior as before when the box was unchecked. However, when the box was checked, the problem was partially solved: the shut-down time was reduced from over 5 minutes down to a mere 12 seconds, and in fact, the start-up time was also reduced from about 16 seconds to 10 seconds; however, when I restarted the computer, as opposed to shutting it down, I found the exact same behavior as before. Thus, after checking this box, there is now no longer any problem with the computer shutting-down, but only when restarting.
Best Answer
I would suggest you to track the processes running in the background. May be a background application or any process is the reason behind delay in shutdown.
Go to Task Manager
Click on Process Tabs
You need to verify your processes individually. End a process and Shutdown (See if it resolves)
Note - Be clear you are aware of default process list. Verify these essential processes needed to run Windows 8, http://www.technibble.com/essential-processes-needed-to-run-windows/
If you Shutdown it while on a network...Try the same after disconnecting.
You may also close the programs shown in notification area, before shutting down.. If it doesn't take much time... Its verified that a process is leading to slow down shutdown.