Usually it happens when U mess around with device drivers...Besides who says 98' ME' 2000' XP are perfect OS's. When this kind of symptoms occur in frequency, FORMAT.COM is my solution. Re-install, that's Y i have 2 back-up HD.

CB-Byte

i did re install didnt fix it though

:/ You can't fix it if you don't know what to fix. What's the specs of your PC...Hardrives, MOBO, CPU, Video Card, etc.

If u did re-install and did not fix the problem, it is because you re-install the same drivers. (Might be)

CB-Byte

p 1.5 ghz radeon 9000 512 ram

yeah, but what about the HD?

I just think byteguy is right on with this:

That happens a lot of the time with people that i service. Weird ass apps that are running and need to be killed off in either the registry, msconfig, startup or whatever. If its not this (and since u reinstalled windows again and it still doesn't work) you should try using a new/known-working HD instead.

40 gb hd oly 20 gb used

Possible answer
 

HI,

This is not uncommon, do you have a firewall or virus software? If so, manually stop these before shutting down. Mcafee in particular can cause this problem. You may also have to shut down related processes manually in task manager.

It's interesting that the problem is still there after a reformat, was the problem there before you installed any apps or drivers? If so this could be a problem with you HDD, or more likely your CD.

I hope this is of some help
phill

I would agree with those who said that it is most likely a service or program haning it up. You might want to try FreshUI or some other registry editing tool that can help you set XP to force a shutdown of any program that doesn't want to close when its told to.