The Application Server is (usually) run as a Windows service i.e. it is a executable that performs specific functions and it is designed not to require user intervention. Windows Services are not stopped by direct user intervention but by the Windows Service Control Manager.

During shutdown the Application Server performs the tasks listed in table 2 (in the listed sequence). Depending on the amount of data handled by the system the process of a clean shutdown can take some seconds, to be able to finish all shutdown tasks cleanly the Application Server will request more shutdown time from the operating system than the time usually granted to Windows services.This might slow down the shutdown process of your operating system too. Details about the shutdown process are written to the log.

Note that in rare cases the system might not provide the Application Server the time it needs to perform all tasks listed in table one. Especially the Writing caches to disk task might need more time than the system provides. However in these rare cases no information will be lost, only the caches will have to be built anew when the system starts again. If you find that on your system the operating system quits the Application Server before the caches are written (see log file) you can tweak the Windows registry to give server processes more time to quit.Please refer to your operating system documentation on more details on this.

Table 1: Tasks performed by the Application Server during shutdown. Listed in sequence of execution.