I have a Dell Dimension 8400 Desktop with 2GB of Ram and 2 x 160GB hard Drives. I’ve always maintained current drivers, bios, chipset, etc.
Recently I’ve been unable to shut my system completely down unless I hold the off/on button down for a few seconds. When I try to shut it down through the “Start” menu, it goes through all the normal motions like “saving your setting” and “Window is shutting down”, but then after that it hangs on a blank blue screen.
That’s when I have to hold the off/on button down to power off. I’ve tried all sorts of system & registry cleaners, driver and bios updates, however, no luck. Is there anyway to diagnose this problem short of reinstalling XP Professional or SP2. I should also mention that I can shut down normally without problems from the Windows Safe Mode. Arrrrg. If only there was a utility to narrow this down to a task, service, or application without having to perform trial and error shutdowns. Anybody???
