Hello again,

I have a computer that is having difficulty shutting down at times. It shuts down smoothly roughly 50% of the time. The other 50% a black screen appears and the fans stay on when I try and shut down.

The computer is running ME and has an Athlon XP 2000, 356 MB's of RAM and is part of a two computer home network. I'm running the latest version of Zone Alarm's Security Suite.

Any help would be greatly appreciated as this is a giant pain in the neck. Thanks.

Hi briarwood,

This issue is reported on MS Knowledge base, at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/273746/en-us

Chris

Thanks for the link Ironbender, much appreciated.

briarwood,

The following is written for Win98SE but it should also work for WinME.

http://www.smartcomputing.com/messages/ans...aid=82114&ref=1

I have had this icon on my desktop [Win98SE] for a couple of years and have no "hang-ups" on shutdown.

Thanks for the link oldbob. It's better but still not 100%.

The Microsoft fixes didn't help but the desktop Shutdown command helped a bit. It probably shuts down 50% of the time now as opposed to 20% before. I'm going to keep searching.

Thanks for the help.

briarwood,

Desktop icon "should" work better then that.

Do you have any sound effects set for shutdown operation ??

Click on "Control Panel" and "Sound" icon to check, if there is any remove it.
This just slows down the shutdown routine.

NOTE: I am going by Win98SE but I think WinME is the same.

Thanks oldbob. I don't have an Exit Windows sound loaded. I tried that fix when the Microsoft link was posted. I'm baffled. It's a pain in the neck to shut down. I'm going to keep searching for a fix.

briarwood,

The "usual" cause of a shutdown hang up is - Windows is having trouble "cleaning up & closing down" running routines.

If you want to do some "shotgun troubleshooting", just prior to shutdown click on "Ctrl + Alt + Delete" and see what's running.

Try closing "one item" and click on shutdown icon. Keep closing one item at a time until you find the "item" that allows shutdown without a pause.

That will be the cause of your hangups !!

Good Luck

I traced the problem to Zone Alarm Security Suite. I have a small network two computers connected via a Linksys router. I have the Zone Alarm option set on the router and ZA Security Suite set up on both computers, one running XP and one running ME. The ME version has a terrible time shutting down with ZA running but the XP system doesn't.

The problem is I need some form of licensed ZA running on both computers or the router won't let me access the internet. What a giant pain in the neck this is.

briarwood,

If you're lucky, Microsoft "might" have a WinME security patch for your problem.

May be a WinME user has the answer.

Again, good luck