windows xp - DWwin.exe DLL Initialization Failed during shutdown

I'm getting an error whenever I shut down the computer:

dwwin.exe - DLL Initialization Failed
The application failed to initialize because the window station is shutting down.

A quick search found this site which says this is a Dr. Watson related problem and the way to fix it is to delete the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AeDebug.

This seems to me to be fixing the symptom rather than the problem, if Dr. Watson is trying to initialize during shut-down it means that a program is crashing, how can I determine which program this is in order to fix it? At this point the machine is shutting down and I can do nothing.

Answer

Have you checked the Windows message logs (they can be found in the Computer Management control panel / mmc snap-in) to see if any error is present there that might detail which process crashed and therefor cause Windows to attempe to start DrWatson to analyse the issue?

If there is nothing in there, try shutting down as much as you can (close programs, stop services) before you shut down - if the problem does not occur then one of the items you stopped manually is likely to be the problem (or part of it) so you can be more selective next time to try find the culprit by process of ellimination. If you are lucky you'll find the right one simply by shutting things down as it may fail on manual close the same way it fails when Windows closes it due to a shutdown request.