i received the svchost.exe upon shut down, but then i can not shut down because it says that there is a program running.

you have a virus, probably the Blaster or Goabot version.

Not true. It doesn't necessarily mean that at all. http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=http://support.microsoft.com:80/support/kb/articles/Q250/3/20.ASP &NoWebContent=1 This will show you how to see which applications are using svchost.exe

The svchost.exe error usually relates to a virus/shareware/worm or something that is utilizing the svhost.exe file to launch a particular service/hog you CPU time! Have you installed a patch/Service Pack from Microsoft recently? If so this might be the cause, as I have come across many times before.. You can try stopping running processes and see if that stops the error from popping up! Note which one you stop, try and do it one @ a time and then shutdown/reboot! Time consuming but that’s troubleshooting for you! But if you want a long term fix there is only really one way you can really get rid of this! Backup you registry entries from regedt32.exe find and replace the svchost.exe file from the OS admin install location, upgrade/reinstall the latest service pack, say 4 for WIN2K. Reboot, if it fails to reboot use the last known good configuration... if you are still having trouble boot into safe mode, launch regedt32.exe, click registry>restore and use the backup you created before you started the whole process. But do so at you own risk as SP and Patch upgrades from Microsoft can be a pain and are often the cause of the problem you are having.. Also editing the registry should not be taken lightly do this at your own risk, always take a backup before making major changes i.e upgrading/installing a patch for windows! Good Luck