I have a Sony Vaio PCG-F270 originally running Win 98. I upgraded to Win Me with following problem When Shut Down command is run, the laptop freezes displaying vertical stripes. In order to shut down I have to switch-off the machine. When reboting the system runs scandisk automatically. I got the explanation that is a conflict on IRQ 9 shared by different devices. Anyone can help me with such problem? Thanks in advance Pablo Spindler loughma@attglobal.net

There is some conflict going on. First, before you shut down, do a ctrl-alt-del and manually close everything except explorer and systray. Try a shut down. If it works, the culprit is something that was running. If that doesn't help, try upgrading your video and sound card drivers. You can also check for irq conflicts in device manager. I would think that if there was one, the machine would have problems besides at shutdown. In a desktop, you would change irqs by changing slots for the peripherals but with a laptop, you may have to do it in your bios if possible.

Pablo, Do you have Windows IDE Hard Drive Cache Package-version 4,90,3000,0 ? If not you can get it at Microsoft's up-date site,hope this helps. thebest2uDon