I have a sony vaio computer with Windows ME. I recently reformatted with the factory software. Everything works fine except when I shut down, it closes windows and leaves me with a black screen and a flashing cursor (no dos prompt). The computer than freezes up and does not respond to anything except me unplugging it. When I start it up again, it informs me of the improper shutdown. What can I do?

Todd Dunbar, seems 98 based machines (ME's one) had a shutdown problem related to speed. Certain things MUST be written to disk at shutdown to avoid a future brain cramp and because of fast shutdown, some machines didn't do the write. Soulution in that case was to simply disable fast shutdown. Sometimes that did the trick. If the problem persists, a stand alone shutdown proggie offers another possibility. I've used 'Slawdog' to shutdown with great success. If you need it, get it free @:
http://www.slawdog.com/products/smartsd/
HTH.
Ed in Texas.

Start here http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=273746 also look at the shutdown update from Windows Update website.

Thanks guys, I'm going to learn more about the shutdown process. Turns out it was the live update on my norton anti-virus that was causing the computer to hang.