ATI users who have had this problem should take note:

I updated to ATI's latest catalyst drivers, thinking they would be better overall for my new 9800 Pro than whatever driver it is that Dell supplies, since they update drivers for their computers so rarely. I quickly became aware that the new drivers were "phoning home", while I had the Catalyst Control Panel open. I wasn't overly worried about that, since I'm already on ATI's mailing list for deals on vid cards, and didn't give a damn if they knew when I was fiddling with my vid card's settings.

However after installing the drivers, upon shut down at the end of the day I noticed that I had started to get a slowdown in the process. I would see a taskmanager window reporting that it was ending the program ".Netbroadcast event window"
I did a google search and found this discussion at the Broadband Reports forum. It has a link to a Microsoft webpage that apparently has the fix to the problem. I haven't tried it yet. I'll get back to you on that.

Hmmm........ here's another discussion, short and sweet.

And the same guy trying somewhere else back in July.

Damn! I can't find a fix for this anywhere. ATI users be warned. The latest Catalyst Control Centre drivers still have not addressed this issue, minor as it is.

software firewall won't stop it?

I get the same thing on my media computer. Will have to research this. ATi's site does not seem to have any information on this.

Well, I may have a solution. I found it by accident, but it worked for me.
Try downloading this.
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Tweak/System-Tweak/Intelli-HyperSpeed.shtml
I used the Media center tweak option, and I no longer have the issue with shutting down the computer.
hope it works for you as well.

Oh God! There's 2 of those avatars jumping around at the same time now. The nightmares I will have.

I followed Bigi's suggestion and blocked it with Zone Alarm. That got rid of the problem, but I cannot use the "Catalyst Control Center" any more. No loss, so far as I can see.

Jarg, I noticed that the "user ratings" for that tweaking software were obviously written by shills. Have you seen any truly independent reviews for the program yet?

By the way herm how did you get your avatars on Yahoo messenger?

Scify, to be honest, I couldn't tell you. I don't remember. I'll look into it. What do I have now?

I finaly got it thanks Herm

No. I just downloaded it to give it a try. I did not even look at the user reviews. As for my review... Not much difference before tweaks and after.