Computer hanging on shutdown

Whenever I shut down my PC at work I always get a blinking DOS cursor at the top left corner of the screen and it never shuts down. I have to restart manually let Windows run scandisk then shut down again and it usually works. I am running Windows ME at work btw.

Tracking down shutdown and power-off problems (they differ) can be somewhat difficult, but the following articles may be of some help to you...

How to Troubleshoot Windows Me Shutdown Problems
http://support.microsoft.com?kbid=273746

Windows Shutdown & Restart Center Windows Millennium Edition
http://aumha.org/win4/a/shtdwnme.htm

I used to have that problem when I used Win 98, It would sit there in Either the "Windows is shutting down screen" or in DOS mode with the blinking cursor, I downloaded the patches and It came right after that. It is a common defect in Windows 98. After I had gone into 98SE it would only hang in the Cursor screen, but if you download that very same patch that you can find on Microsoft's website, that'll still work.
It also did the same thing with ME for me too. I just DL'd the patch and it still worked fine afterwards.
If the problem persists and gets overly annoying, I backed up the data on one of my PCs (now this was in like 1999.) and did a clean OS reinstall, it didn't do that anymore after wards.

i just give it the old hard power down hehe im too lazy to figure out whats wrong.

you most likely have something left running in the background that is keeping the system from shutting down. Hit CTRL-ALT-DEL , and shut things off one by one and see if it will shut down afterwards.

CrystalMethod said:

you most likely have something left running in the background that is keeping the system from shutting down. Hit CTRL-ALT-DEL , and shut things off one by one and see if it will shut down afterwards.

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Yeh I thought of that and it worked today when I left work. It has only started doing this recently though and I haven't installed anything in over 2 months.

well, maybe the problem is just windows ME.... AAAHHH, it's EVIL!!! get it away!!! haha

Statik said:

well, maybe the problem is just windows ME.... AAAHHH, it's EVIL!!! get it away!!! haha

Click to expand...

Worst OS ever...

Does it shut down fine from safe mode? That would point toward issues with a process or driver that doesn't get loaded in safe mode. If you haven't installed anything it could be spyware that's installed itself. If you can't track down the specific process try running adaware, spybot and a virus scan.

windows 98 had a mapped drive shutdown issue. Plus plenty of patches to "fix" the problem. Most of the patches don't work.

Anyway, do you have a lot of mapped drives at work?

I have one single drive. I am going to try to find some patches or better yet upgrade to XP.