Basically the laptop won't shut down. I click on that option when I wan to close but all it does is perform a restart and does not shut down. The SM Bus controller in device manager has a yellow '?' by it. Any ideas to rectify RickB

RickB,I use a desktop so they may be different, but FWIW, Windows seems to have been plagued with shutdown problems of one sort or another since day 1. I use a standalone shutdown proggie (for convenience) called 'Slawdog' (said to work on all versions). Get it free @: http://www.slawdog.com/products/sma... among other places. Works good and I drag/dropped the icon into my quicklaunch so it'd be handy for use. HTH. Ed in Texas.

Windows XP Restarts Unexpectedly or Restarts When You Shut Down the Computer http://support.microsoft.com/defaul... -------------------- Windows XP Restarts When You Try to Shut Down Your Computer http://support.microsoft.com/defaul... -------------------- http://support.microsoft.com/defaul... Resources to Help Troubleshoot Shutdown Problems in Windows XP

"The SM Bus controller in device manager has a yellow '?' by it." Try Uninstalling that entry and rebooting, then looking there again. If it still has a yellow ? beside it, or in ANY case.... Windows may not have the proper information about your motherboard chipset's ACPI support, which determines how Shut Down, Standby, Restart and other ACPI related things work, if you have not loaded the drivers for the main chipset, or if the drivers and/or the ACPI information have/has become corrupted. (The SM Bus controller problem may not be directly related to your problem, but if it is not recognized properly that often indicates the main chipset drivers have not been loaded or are corrupted.) If you still have the brand name maker's original software installtion on your computer, the proper mboard drivers are already present, and you should NOT be getting that SM Bus controller error, and your ACPI features should work correctly, unless something has become corrupted. Whenever you load Windows from a regular Windows CD (or DVD) from scratch, after Setup is finished you must load the drivers for the mboard, particularly the main chipset drivers, in order for Windows to have the proper drivers for and information about your mboard hardware, including it's AGP or PCI-E, ACPI, and hard drive controller support. If you have a generic system and have the CD that came with the mboard, all the necessary drivers are on it. If you load drivers from the web, brand name system builders and mboard makers often DO NOT have the main chipset drivers listed in the downloads for your model - in that case you must go to the maker of the main chipset's web site, get the drivers, and load them. In your case, you have the Intel 855GM chipset. The main chipset drivers and/or the information Windows needs about the mboard's main chipset are loaded by you downloading and running the INF Update Utility here: http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Pro... If you're not sure whether the main chipset drivers are loaded, or they have been but you're not sure whether they may have become corrupted, it does no harm to try loading them again, and you usually don't need to un-install main chipset drivers before loading them again.

Well I've tried all the options listed but to no avail. The Intel download tells me that it needs a supported platform installed ??? I have not got a clue about that one. Any other ideas?? Thanks to everyone so far RickB

Do you still have this: "The SM Bus controller in device manager has a yellow '?' by it." If you do, and if you have loaded the proper main chipset drivers again, your mboard may be damaged, or something in your bios Setup settings may be incorrect. You could try loading bios defaults, or optimal bios defaults, in your bios Setup. If you have flashed your bios you MUST load one of those, because your bios cmos contents including what settings you see in Setup may not work properly unless you do that. Did this computer ever Shut Down properly previously? If it did, at what point did it start to not do that? Was there some event that happened, such as an AC power failure or a lightning storm, or some software you loaded, or device you plugged in, after which it didn't work? Does your optical drive work correctly?