Windows 98se Shutdown

I have seen this a lot, and spent a lot of time trying to repair it to no avail.

I have found that once the system hits that screen, and the hard drives stop, the system is shut down, because i never get the error that says my system was shutdown incorrectly.

If it truly drives you nuts, I would upgrade your system to windows XP.

There's the Win98 SE Shutdown Supplement available from Microsoft:

http://tinyurl.com/bjpu

Check here for a set of steps that can be the cause of this problem:

http://aumha.org/win4/a/shutdown.htm

If you install the Shutdown Supplement from MS and it works, then you are fine, but I find that many people running Win98SE have too many programs running as TSRs. Therefore:

Click on Start --> Run --> msconfig.
Click on the Selective Startup box and then click on the last tab (Startup).
UNcheck everything from there, except Explore and Systray (those two programs are the only ones that Windows needs resident in memory).
Shutdown and reboot, then do whatever you need to.

Essentially from that point on, you should not have this problem. If programs do not work, you can go back to the Startup tab in this area and re-check them one-by-one and test after each check.

If with only systray and explore checked, you still have this problem, and you have run the shutdown supplement, then I recommend that you reformat your hdd and start over with the same OS. Your registry probably has too much remanents of programs in it, and your machine is not operating with it's available resources properly. A fresh install tend to be needed with Win98SE from time-to-time.

Someone else suggested upgrading to WinXP. That's an option if you do not have any legacy devices you need to use (like for instance, a parallel port scanner)... frankly, WinXP is a better OS.

Go to ms update and get BOTH the shutdown fix and the fast delay HD fix. The second fix is for the newer to m$ [ata 66 and above HD's] and allows the delay to fully clear the pc for shutdown. It is not a critical update and you must hunt for it in the "extra's" area below the critical updates in the upper left of the m$ screen.

Here's a simple process of elemenation way to find the cuplrit. Before shutting down use crtl-alt-delete to stop running tasks one at a time then shut down the system. If it still doesnt change try the next one. Supposedly if the problem causer is not running the PC should shut down regularly. The main cause of this is virus software still scanning the system. Check the virus settings and disable scanning of the floppy drive at shutdown, which is not needed since most of the time there's no disk in the drive. Also download and run a spyware utility.

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