I hope you can help me with an annoying problem I have when shutting down Windows 98. When I choose ‘Shut Down’ from the ‘Start’ menu, all goes well until after the screen announcing that Windows is shutting down. Then, instead of the usual screen message “It is now safe to turn off your computer” the screen goes blank with a pale flashing cursor. The only thing that seems to solve the problem is pressing Control-Alt-Delete, but this of course restarts the computer. It does not happen every time Windows is shut down, but often enough to be annoying. What can I do about this?

There are currently two version of Windows 98. Windows 98 and Windows 98 SE (Second Edition). Windows 98 SE has a shutdown problem which many people are experiencing. It is officially recognised by Microsoft. There are many possible fixes for this problem as the problem could be caused by a number of factors. Please have a look at the following article at Microsoft Knowledge Base: support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q239/8/87.asp. This gives an explanation of the problem and possible solutions. However, if you are using the first edition of Windows 98 then there are other reasons for your problem. Firstly, try disabling Fast Shutdown in Windows (which is enabled by default). When you shutdown Windows without Fast Shutdown, all of the device drivers are uninitialised. However, when you have Fast Shutdown enabled, the drivers are not uninitialised which means a faster shutdown. By disabling Fast Shutdown you can sometimes fix Windows 98 shutdown problems. To do this, go to the ‘Start’ menu > ‘Run’ and type in ‘msconfig’ (without the quotes) followed by pressing the ‘Ok’ button. The ‘System Configuration Utility’ window will now appear. Click the ‘General’ tab and then the ‘Advanced’ button near the bottom. In the window that appears, click to enable the setting ‘Disable Fast Shutdown’ (NB: If it is already selected DO NOT change it or any other settings). Once this is done, click the ‘Ok’ button, then ‘Ok’ again. When you are prompted to restart your computer, click the ‘Yes’ button. A second possible fix is to use the ‘Scandisk’ utility to do a full scan of your hard drive(s) including a ‘Surface Scan’ to check for any hard drive errors. Thirdly, try disabling the Microsoft Find Fast indexer which is included with Office 97 (if you are running Office 97). You can find instructions for doing this at support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q158/7/05.ASP. There are instructions here on how to re-enable the Find Fast indexer if needed.