I have a Pentium MMX 233, I run Windows 95 Plus. My problem is that when I click on start, go to shut down, then go to restart in MS-DOS mode a problem occurs. The icons on the screen disappear, the wallpaper remains, the mouse cursor is movable but is not active and the screen locks. The computer has to be re-activated through Windows but the problem is I cannot use MS-DOS only programs. I hope you can understand the problem I am having as it is difficult to explain as I am a novice at such unusual things. I would greatly appreciate it if you could help me to solve this problem.

This problem could be caused by a number of things. (i) A damaged shutdown sound file. To determine if this is the problem go to Start menu > Settings > Control Panel > Sounds. In the ‘Events Box’ click ‘Exit Windows’ and then under ‘Name’ click the drop down box and click ‘None’. (ii) Advanced Power Management (APM). To find if this is the problem go back to the start menu and (depending on your version of Windows) open ‘Power’ or ‘Power Management’ and disable APM. (iii) There may be a conflict in the Win.ini or System.ini file(s). Go to Start menu > Run and type in ‘msconfig’, click OK. Click the general tab and ‘Selective Startup’. Un-check all the boxes underneath that except Win.ini and System.ini click OK and restart. NB: If you are not confident doing this yourself get someone experienced with computers to do it for you. When you have rebooted and the computer will still not shutdown properly then it is a problem with the Win.ini and System.ini files. Get someone to examine these files carefully for you. Accidentally editing these files could reflect severely on your computers behavior. If none of these solutions work then there may be a problem with the computers internal system. Please ask an experienced computer technician to look at your computer to try and find the problem. Finally, a solution that will work around (but not fix) the problem. During startup when the ‘Starting Windows 95′ message is displayed, press F8 or CTRL (depending on how your computer is set up) and select ‘Command Prompt Only’ from the startup menu. This will load your computer up at the DOS command prompt. You will need to do this every time you want to operate in MS-DOS mode. To reload Windows just reset the computer.