About 3 weeks ago I started having Shutdown problems in my Win 98 SE machine. I tried the usual things: disable fast shutdown, MS shutdown supplement, new drivers, and a host of other things many helpful people suggested and posted in this forum. The problem was intermittent and after everthing I still had shutdown hangs. In my research I found one suggestion to change the BIOS setting from a non-plug & play OS to plug & play OS. I did this and LO and BEHOLD my shutdown problem went away! I've noticed no other changes in the way things work - now my question is just what exactly is the difference between the BIOS settings of a non-plug & play OS and plug & play OS? I found that it has something to do with how resources get assigned/set up, but past that not much more. Any advice or answers would be appreciated. JamesD

Windows NT 4.0 was a typical non plug and play system.Win 95 was the first to overcome, with some success, the problem of IRQ's settings, a nightmare in many situations of IRQ conflicts.Good luck.

That's very interesting! Thanks for the feedback JamesD.

JamesD, Have a look at these pages for a detailed description. The Plug-and-Play (PnP) Solution at http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Plug-and-Play-HOWTO-3.html Setting up a PnP BIOS at http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Plug-and-Play-HOWTO-4.html In short: If you say "No PnP OS" then the IOS sets it ALL If you say "PnP OS" then the OS and Drives set it ALL IMO, with current MS OS's it should be set to PnP except if usng Linux then it is best to set it to "No PnP" HtH

Here is another page I think you may find informative: Plug & Play / PCI Configuration at http://www.electrocution.com/pci.htm Scotsmist may also help you with you understand some of the other BIOS settings again HTH

Thanks for the info, Chappie JamesD