I have been doing some research and i have noticed that:

In Safe Mode / Safe Mode with Networking = Shutdown/Restart works normally.

Holding Shift key while pressing Restart in Charms bar and then pressing Shut Down on the new screen = PC shuts down instantly.

Hmm.. i don't know exactly what is disabled in Safe Mode but i know that drivers is disabled. I doubt this is a driver issue because it happens also at the end of Windows 8 installation but who knows.

Hi, I had the same problem with my newly-purchased DZ77GA-70K board and using Windows 8 Pro 64-bit OS. What finally solved my issue of system hanging at restart and at log off was uninstalling the Intel HD Graphics driver. After that, Windows 8 now consistently restarts and shuts down normally. I tried all of the Intel graphics driver versions I could find including letting Windows 8 update the driver for me, but the hanging problem always re-appeared.

Then I installed my discrete graphics card and installed only those drivers and not the one from Intel. I have not had this problem since. I wonder if in your case, when installing Windows 8 the Intel graphics driver is automatically downloaded which would result in this problem.

Anyway, thought I would share what I found, and hopefully it will help. I can also confirm that using the Intel graphics driver in Windows 7 64-bit is not a problem.

Cheers.

I disabled IGP and i never used IGP drivers so it must be something else causing it.

I got contacted by Intel via mail regarding this issue. I sent them a link to my youtube video and here is what they replied:

Thank you for your last email.

 

From the video image you have made, it appear that the issue with your
desktop board DZ77GA is related to Windows.

 

What I suggest is to reinstall the operating system again as a new clean installation without
installing anything else and restart the system. Should the system boot
and restart fine strait after the new installation, is clearly evident
that the issue is related to Windows or application installed.

Bear mind that when you restart in Safe Mode, the system do not load any drivers
as it use only a basic video output signal and nothing else, that’s why
the system boot faster.

 

If you have an Anti Virus installed or any
application or group policies which are configured to load at start-up,
the system will take longer regardless if you use an SSD drive, in fact
as you can notice on your video, when you use the shutdown and restart
option, you can see that the system shut down in few seconds but then
take longer to boot as it’s trying to load something from the background.

 

We cannot see anything wrong with your desktop system as is clearly
working and there is no need’s for further troubleshooting as not issues
have been founded.
Should you need further support please contact the Microsoft Support
team.

Intel does not acknowledge that it is a firmware bug, they keep saying that "it is a problem with windows or your board". Well, well...

I agree with Intel's assessment.  What your video shows is clearly a Windows issue. Further, the amount of time involved does not appear to be "excessive" by my judgement.

The reason I don't believe it has anything to do with firmware is that all the running processes at that point should be doing so in 64-bit virtual mode memory. No BIOS code is involved. The actual shutdown command is a call to hardware interrupt INT 15 and that does invoke a BIOS ACPI routine, but it works the same from both "safe mode" and normal mode. Before the call is made it's all Windows. The delay you're seeing in normal mode  is Windows playing with itself before the INT15 is called.

Windows, especially Windows 8, performs a great deal of cleanup, housekeeping and, if you are participating in the Customer Experience Improvement program, some occasional "report home to the mothership" activity on shutdown.  You don't see it in "safe mode" because the underlying services for these "features" don't load in "safe mode."  Another indication the delay is Windows related, not firmware.

You can reduce, but not totally eliminate, the delay by going through Windows setups and disabling anything relating to the Customer Experience Improvement Reporting (check task scheduler, for starters) but there may be a more comprehensive way to opt out of the program. I haven't had a chance to do that research, but it should not be hard to find.

The rest of it seems to result from Windows 8 doing a better job of cleaning up after itself than previous versions and that's a good thing.  Note that in previous versions of Windows a lot of this activity used to be done when Windows started.  It looks like Microsoft moved it to shutdown in the interest of achieving faster boot times (in other words, it's a tradeoff in response to complaints that Windows took too long to boot). Think of it as "pre-initialization" for the next session.

Well....

• It does not happen on ASUS Z77 boards, i had one of these before i bought Intel board so i know. I can go spend 200$ on another ASUS Z77 board to prove it.
• It happens at the end of Windows 8 installation.
• It happens in Windows PE 4.0 and PE is kinda only the core of Windows so it does not have or is running everything that Windows 8 runs.
• Before i purchased UEFI Nvidia graphics card, the system would hang on reboot/shutdown. After i purchased UEFI card, instead of hang it takes 30 second or more to shutdown. Many other people confirmed that they also have the same issues.
• Even if it does clean up stuff it should not take longer then 10 seconds to reboot/shutdown.

Do you really think that a 30+ seconds reboot/shutdown time is normal?

Don't you think that people would complain all over the internet if this was the case?

Traded slower shutdown for faster boot? I don't agree because for me Windows 7 boots in 10 seconds, similar to Windows 8 but it shuts down in 2 seconds and not in 30+ as Windows 8.

I don't care anymore if it a OS issue or a firmware issue. I want Intel to solve it. If they can't solve it on their own they can contact Microsoft to solve it together. I am not the one that can solve it, Intel/Microsoft can solve it. Intel has put a Windows 8 logo on this motherboard and it is their responsibility to make the OS work properly on this board or they should remove that sticker and put a Windows 7 sticker instead.

So i experience the same issue with slow rebooting when Legacy boot is enabled with windows 8 installed. It is the same with UEFI enabled or not. Its not that it takes a long time to shutdown or reboot the computer will not do either it will eventually have a kernal panic and restart that way. (I agree this could be windows 8/drivers)

I do not experience the reboot or shutdown issue with secure boot enabled which disables legacy boot. However with secure boot enabled and legacy disabled the computer will not detect my PCI-E graphics card. (This is a BIOS firmware issue)

I am running windows 7 ultimate x64 with no issues. I am hoping for an updated bios to correct the issue with the detection of the graphics card so that i can install windows 8 and not have the reboot/shutdown issue.

Windows 8 fast shutdown suggestion:

Right click on the desktop and select New then shortcut

Enter the following:  
%windir%\system32\shutdown\shutdown.exe /s /t 0

Click next and enter a name such as shutdown and then click on finish

Now when the shortcut appears on the desktop, right mouse
click on it and click on change icon and pick the power icon or something else
if want a different look. The click OK and apply.

If you desire you can pin the shutdown button to the taskbar
and/or start menu.  I pinned my to the taskbar
and then one click shutdowns the PC in 10 seconds or less.

Note: You will you not be getting a hybrid shutdown but
shutdown is faster and startup is a little slower.

Another suggestion is to go into the Power Options menu and
change what the power buttons do then Change settings that are currently
unavailable. Uncheck fast startup and hybrid.
I do this as I boot other OSs and Windows 8 will set the dirty bit on
for the other systems which forces a disk check at boot up for the other OSs. This is a real pain.

The above will not fix bios issues but it helps me shutdown the PC faster.

I'm having the same issue on DZ77RE-75K with i7 3770k (no extra video card, just HD4000). The system would hang on reboot/shutdown almost every time. I'm an Intel employee and bought the bundle from the internal website.

For those who don't have DZ77GA or DZ77RE, please get this board first, install Win 8, and then speak. The issue is hanging instead of being slow.

For Intel desktop board guys, it has to be the firmware issue as I don't see it happen to any other z77 express boards or any win 8 virtual machine. So please investigate this seriously.

It's not a universal problem, I've never had an instance where the machine didn't execute a commanded shutdown/sleep -- eventually.

I have a GA with BIOS 0061 and a 3770K CPU, I'm using the integrated graphics and Windows 8 Pro (clean install to a 240GB Series 520 SSD connected to SATA_0 with the controller in AHCI mode). Before I installed the GA release I ran the beta (er, preview) release of Windows 8 Pro obtained through TechNet.  That one was an upgrade over an existing Windows 7 Ultimate installation.  

A commanded shutdown usually takes 15 to 20 sec from the time I click the on-screen button until the power light goes out.  Putting the machine in sleep state S3 takes even less time.

However, and very occasionally, it will take a while longer when Windows or some other software is installing a deferred update, performing some form of extended cleanup or reporting CIP data to the mothership (see task scheduler). I know the delay comes from Windows because I can still see the spinning wheel of wait and that means the WIndows video driver hasn't been terminated. 

Now you said it.. you have the same problem but you don't call it a problem because for you 15,20,30,40 seconds shutdown time is normal. I can Shutdown/Restart Linux, Mac OS X, Windows 7 in 1-3 second and you find it normal to wait over 30 seconds for Shutdown/Restart to complete in Windows 8.

What i find it odd that someone in here claims to have fixed it by uninstalling IGP drivers and i don't even use IGP.

Also "%windir%\system32\shutdown.exe /s /t 0" does not work for me. Same problem.

I see that Intel has acknowledged Secure Boot issues because in the BIOS release notes for some H77/Z77 boards I see that they fixed it. Maybe one day they will acknowledge the issue with Windows 8 and fix it.

@dislikeyou,

The information that I posted does work (helps) as I am using it on four differnet W8 images across three different motherboards. However, I am not using secure boot, hybrid sleep or hibernation.

You might consider using Legacy verses UEFI and see if you can tell a difference.