Hello,
I'm having a bit of trouble with an Windows ME system. This HP system
originally shipped with ME, but the user installed Windows XP.

She started receiving BSOD's with XP and had me to reformat and reinstall
Windows ME for her.

Everything seemed to be working great, but when she set the system up at her
house she ran into problems.

Everything worked great until she tried loading her apps back on the system.

The problem:
When she is on the Internet, either in IE or Outlook, the screen will freeze.
If she hits CTRL+ALT+DEL a blue screen will flash with "Press any key to
continue".

Also, after selecting shutdown the screen will go black/blank with a flash
cusor. It then takes up to 6 minutes to shutdown completely.

I have narrowed down that she installed the following before getting this error:

1. DSL, Speedstream Modem -USB (she did not install the ISP software or drivers)
2. MSN Messenger 7.0
3. Easy CD Creator 5.x
4. Updated to latest version of Internet Explorer
5. KodakEasy Share
6. Logitech mouse software
7. AVG Free
8. ZoneAlarm Basic, 6.x
9. Misc. games for her grandkids

Thanks for the help!

Forgot to mention, the shutdown problem does not occur when simply restarting the system.

If you've got a lot of unnecessary startup programs (most are), it could be one or more of them causing the system to hang while shutting down.

Both Kodak and Logitech software usually contains Backweb, which should probably be removed from startup.

You might want to read here:

How to run Windows ME well V.5

I'd skip number two, I've never found it to be necessary and it could definitely be dangerous.

Don't disable explorer, systray, scanregistry, *StateMgr or any security software entries via msconfig.

Thanks to Leroi for pointing you to my post. Yes, it should help, but I would also have a caution about a number of things which are installed.

The Speedstream USB software has often caused issues with ME

The "latest version of Internet Explorer" is also often a problem - I have found that 5.5 works best with ME over the years

I have never like the operation of ZoneAlarm with ME - the free Sygate firewall to be found at sygate.com works better with ME

One way to find out what's causing the problems is to format again and reinstall ME again and then do exactly and all of what is suggested in the tweaks post to set up the system properly, especially updating chipset drivers. Then install one program at a time, testing the system between each program. It is time consuming but it will tell you exactly where the problem is.

>>Thanks to Leroi for pointing you to my post.<<

You're welcome. I think it's the best single resource on the net for improving performance in Windows ME. I point people to it all the time at several different forums.