I have a Pentium III running Windows 98 second edition and when I try to shut it down, it always gets stuck at the colourful “Windows is shutting down” screen. I have to power it off at the switch, which doesn’t seem like a good thing to do. If you have any suggestions on how to cure this problem I would be very grateful.

This is a recognised problem by Microsoft. The Windows 98 SE shutdown performs many functions. In particular, it completes all disk write functions, flushes the disk cache, runs the Close Window code to close any running applications, and it also transitions all protected-mode drivers into real mode ( however that is not of concern). The most difficult task you have is to diagnose what is happening. Because of the complexity of this question I will have to refer you to the following article in Microsoft Knowledge Base: support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q238/0/96.asp . This explains all the possible causes of your problem, how to diagnose them, and how to fix them. As I have said in a previous question, if you cannot access the internet, please contact me and I will be more than happy to post you a hard copy of this document. Then if you are still having problems with this particular problem (which is persistent for some people) please feel free to contact me again.