Martijn, how is the shutdown process initiated? i have quite some machines running *headless* (no mouse and keyboard attached) with a running vsldaemon, but as daryl using windows remote desktop.
maybe you could find out more sending a shutdown command via network (open a command prompt, type shutdown -m \\computername)
if that works than your currently used method keeps something open accessing the vsldaemon
christian
and remember: only a CRAY can run an endless loop in just three seconds.