Every time I shut down windows with the normal procedure, it fails to completely shut down. Instead, the desktop disappears, screen becomes black with a white " - " blinking on the top left hand corner. How can I tackle the problem? Rain

Rain, ME's 98 based. Many of the shutdown problems experienced in 98 seem to have been cured by disabling 'fast shutdown'. Seems some things needed to write to disk and if that was enabled, there wasn't time. Might give that a try and see if it helps. If that won't do the trick, use the stand alone shutdown 'Slawdog'. Get it free @: http://www.slawdog.com/products/smartsd/ I've used it on 98, ME, XP and it has worked on all. HTH. Ed in Texas.

where is "disable fast shut down" in Me. If I remember correctly in 98 it was in system properties-performance tab-file system-troubleshooting, then check the box. I've looked for it in Me and can't find it. last time I let the microsoft update site scan for updates on my Me system, one of the ones that it listed was one that delayed the shutdown in order to give it time to write to the disk. Maybe this might help? larry

For Windows 98, 'Disable Fast Shutdown' is found in msconfig's 'Advanced' section under the 'General' tab - that feature is not present in WinME's msconfig Me Shutdown Problems Also, see this troubleshooting page "ME's 98 based." Seems like a bit of a stretch - they're both DOS based, anyhow. I'm not insensitive, I just don't care.

Make sure you have the basic updates from the Windows Update site. You need the one for the IDE drive fix at minimum. Often the problem you have is caused by backlevel device drivers. Or other programs that are not shutting down on command. Do full Anti-virus scans and full ADware/Spyware scans of you system to make sure none of those are causing a problem. Then update you system device drivers. If you have an Ethernet card, do it first. If it is a Realtek chip set adapter, they have updated drivers that fix a random shutdown hang problem. Then do the video drivers, system board drivers, etc.