Unable to shut computer off…
Hi Guys:
As most of you know, I had a Mainboard failure with this P-4 Dual Boot machine I have in the studio…
I have a new Mainboard and new Ram to rebuild this box… I have been working on this rebuild sense yesterday evening… All is going fine… and there is no real Bottlenecks to report… except now, I seem to have an issue with this '98SE Desk shutting down…
Normally, I go to Start>then to the screen where you press the “Box” turn Off…
When I do that, nothing Happens… So, to turn off now I press Cont/Alt/Delete… then I turn the computer off by pressing “SHUT DOWN”… The computer then does a NORMAL SHUT DOWN… from there… Unless I do that the computer does nothing from the command of “Start then Turn off”…
What can I do to get this '98SE Desk to shut Down?? Normally… Any suggestions?
Thanks for your help…
Bill…
I have one like that. For 5 years it has never shut down properly.
Of course it hasn’t stopped me…
As long as it starts, I’m set.
Keep woxin’
jerm
Thanks…
IT’s like an unfinished song… or One that never ends… 
Stop turning it off.
Mine runs 24/7 and has for years and years.
Problem solved!
KingFish
Hi KingFish:
I’ve thought about that… Fireing that stuff up is quite an abuse to all that electronics. I suspect that the mainboard failed as a result of turning the power on… This computer stuff has “Switching Power Supplies”. No Power Transformers… I think a surge got through the computer power supply and that caused the mainboard to fail…
But… who knows? 
Bill…
If your computer is plugged in to an outlet that is shared…you should use a line conditioner. Brown outs are as bad as spikes and will shorten equipment life drastically.
My computers are on a separate line to the mains with a line conditioner to boot and have run for years 24/7. The 98’s get rebooted frequently for maintenence purposes (I have to shut down the firewall etc so the defrag goes faster)…the XP’s & W2000 get rebooted ocasionally…but they all run 24/7. Screen savers are set for 1 hour to a blank screen and power management is shut off. I always hated coming up to a computer and waiting for it to wake up.
There was a patch on Windows Update (several years ago) that pertained to a shut down problem in W98 on some computers. Take a look there and if you can’t find it go to microsoft knowledge base and do a search for shut down problems.
KingFish
I did a Google on it… There are several articles on the issue… I downloaded a patch and a bunch of documants regarding the reasons for IT… I may find the issue … We’ll see…
It strange that all-of-a-sudden IT (the issue) started up… right outta the blue…
Bill…
I had this issue years ago with a Win98 machine. Read all the fixes and stuff on the internet. Tried 'em all, never got the thing to shut down properly until I reinstalled 98.
As I recall, Win98 required fairly regular reinstalls to keep it running fresh. XP is certainly better in this regard, but still requires the occasional reinstall. Let’s hope Microsoft gets it right with the next version.
Why are you still running Win98? Of course with an older machine, XP is just not feasible, not to mention the cost of the upgrade, which I think is WAY overpriced. But, a P4 can easily handle XP.
Bill,
Have you got all the BIOS power up/down/saving settings right?
Mark
Hi Mark A, valrecorder, and All:
I’ve been working on this P-4 -98SE mainboard install sence friday morning… Everything appeared to go quite well… Automatically… the drivers and .dll installs began to take hold… I’d re-boot and the loading would continue and I was feeling pretty good about how IT was progressing and all… I went on-line to MS '98SE update and got “Curret” with MS… and I went to AVG and got “Current with the Virus Deffinitions”. and all was going fine… I rebooted and ALL was working fine… Then IT didn’t shut down… Sense then, IT’s been going down-hill at a pretty fast rate… I can “Open” the Control Panel… but I am unable to “Open” anything in there by Clicking on the icons… There appears to be some corruption or inability with some .dll that “Opens” anyfolder in the Control Panel… If I Right-click on My Computer… nothing happens… I’ve installed the "Shut-Down application that I downloaded but that don’t do anything…
I’m afraid… IT’s going from Bad-to-Worse…
I went into the BIOS Panel and set ALL to Default… I haven’t gone beyond the’98SE Desk yet…
When I checked the Desk’s performance… IT looks like some 78% That’s LOW… Something is running… I don’t know what IT is… In fact… the mouse is dragging… The processor is being “Swampped” by something… I know… some “Hot-Shot” could look at this machine and get IT working in 5 minutes…
I went and Loaded Windows OVER Windows… I think that’s a NO-NO… However, that’s what I did… NO-GO…
valrecorder:
The reason I have '98SE installed on and around my setup is… I have this Lexicon CORE 32 audio Hardware… IT works and has drivers for "98 and Windows 2000… No drivers have been written for XP… I’m sure that if the “Right Person” had a Look at the drivers they could Re-Write some Code into them that XP could “SEE” and Work with this stuff… There is ASIO and MME drivers for '98SE and Windows 2000… NO WDM Drivers… I’d be quite happy with drivers that would work in WDM… ASIO4ALL, might work… if I knew How-and-What the requirments for the Hardware was.
The options I see before me are… To continue working this present desk and mabey, get lucky and find a way to FIX IT… Reformat the drive and start all over again… Find a Hot-Shot out there somewhere and get them to make IT work…
I believe that the BIOS is a big factor in why this DESK is not behaving… But. I don’t know enough about it’s interaction with the BIOS-and- DESK-and-OPERATING SYSTEM to set IT right… If I didn’t know better, I’d say the RAM is holding this DESK back… and/but 1 gig of ram can’t be seen by '98SE…
What I see that could be important is… deciding on the correct path to proceed in the quest to make this thing work…
Bill…
Bill,
78% isn’t low…it’s about average.
All sorts of problems can creep in after installing a new mobo. It won’t be any less painless, initially, but I’d reformat and start over personally. It makes it much easier to troubleshoot problems when you know everything started out clean. If you’re pretty organized with your other disks and drivers…it should only take a day or 2!
Sorry for joking around…I know it’s painful! 
Good Luck!
KingFish
Hi KingFish and All:
I thank you for your moral support… You guys are all pretty sharp around this stuff… I’ve been putting in some long hours with this DESK… The Brain has not taken any rest sense I’ve started this rebuild… Untill this board failure this computer has given me little or no issues… That is after I got the XP Desk/Drive and '98SE to reside on the mainboard together… I was so careful not to abuse this setup… I treated each “Boot-up” as a retrofit and I tested and tried each update against each-other to make sure there was nothing strange added to the mix… I don’t store any files on the Boot Drives except applications and Windows files… or things TO-DO with audio that I download from the internet… SO… My audio files are secure… IT’s just gonna take me months to get this '98SE Desk back to where IT was when the mainboard failed…
Now… this P-111 that I’m writing this reply on… That’s another story… I don’t understand why it’s working the way it is… with all the continued abuse I bestow upon it… day-in-and-day-out…
I think I can see where my resolve is going… IT looks like a re-format… 
(As I shake my Head over This)… This ain’t gonna be easy…
I’m gonna add this to the reply…
It appears that Flavio is working on a few new additions to n-Track that I notice in build 2099 that I see in '98SE but I am unable to see in build 2099 in and running on the XP Desk… At least. I’m not able to get them to appear on any XP Desk that I have n-Track installed… on… They appear on the “Second” tool-bar… or the one that you can zoom the .npk/wave files on the time-line … that “tool-bar”… They don’t appear on the “Tool-bar” on the XP Desk… anyway…
Bill…
woxnerw - If you do decide to reinstall windows 98 again, I wouldn’t worry about the shutdown problem. For several years, in the little company where I work, we maintained over 60 computers running Windows 98. My guess is that the majority of those 60 wouldn’t shut down properly, but it never caused a problem, and we gave up trying to fix it. It was mainly an irritation.
I think that Kingfish is right about the reinstall though, in the end it will probably be quicker. When problems start cascading as you are seeing, it is really hard to get back to stability.
Back to hang-on-quit problem: Because some installation programs want to shut down windows and do some more installation activities on restart, after a hang-up, it is easy to accidently interfere with the installation activities when the computer restarts because you don’t expect anything to be going on. So keep an eye on that.
| Quote (tspringer @ May 08 2006,06:22) |
| I think that Kingfish is right about the reinstall though, in the end it will probably be quicker. When problems start cascading as you are seeing, it is really hard to get back to stability. Back to hang-on-quit problem: Because some installation programs want to shut down windows and do some more installation activities on restart, after a hang-up, it is easy to accidently interfere with the installation activities when the computer restarts because you don’t expect anything to be going on. So keep an eye on that. |
Absolutely, and also, if you’ve used and abused the computer hard sometimes shutdown seems to hang when really there is just a lot of housekeeping going on behind the scenes. Always good to wait…have a donut & coffee…and come back to determine if the system was housekeeping or hanging.
KingFish
Bill…
It’s time for a clean install methinks.
Mark
Bill,
I still have an FICVA503+ MOB with an AMD 330 CPU. That board used to shutdown properly with Win 95. Now with Win 98SE, when I choose shutdown, it freezes. Like others, I tried all the fixes I found on the Internet but nothing happened. I have reformatted and reinstalled and still the same. I have settled on selecting RESTART and then I just shut it down as it is restarting and then I don’t have to go through the “Windows was not properly shutdown” startup.
I have decided it is a hardware problem and that is just the way that board is. Maybe you will get lucky with a reinstall.
It’s probably cosmic rays… That’s what I usually use when I haven’t a clue what was wrong…
Hi Today:
I couldn’t spend any quality time with this issue today… But I’ve been reading the replies… My brain is washing through all the options… IT’s so much Grape jelly… I shouldn’t be dividing my time between the job I do and searching for the Best Option to assume when I get back to the P-4 and this '98SE desk…
I have a brand new WD 80gig 8 meg. buffer hard drive… The only hold up I have with useing it is… When I get to bringing up the XP Drive… MicroSoft is gonna take exception to the hardware change and the XP operating system is gonna Phone Home and ask for a re=register of the XP Desk… I’ve had to re-register this operating so many time now that India doesn’t want to deal with me regarding new codes for IT… They’ve passed me on to some phone number in western Canada for the codes… This all goes back to Christmas time when I had all the trouble with the old hard drives not spinning up properly, at Boot-time… and reporting faulty drive recognition… That was an awful situation to resolve… After I swapped out all the old drives … everything was O.K.
I have a question…
Can the operating system being Windows… '98SE be removed from the drive and reloaded with-out haveing to format the drive?? Thus leaving all the applications… “In Tact”? Or… Is that something that can’t be done? Or… Is doing that… a registry Issue?
Is there any way to monitor the boot structure and find out what is causing the build-up of issues that this operating system is grappeling with? Or is that just a time comsummeing effort at trying not to deal with starting all over again?
If only I knew…
Thank you Gentlemen… for all your support…
Bill…
Bill,
I thought that win2000 drivers work under XP, have you tried them?
chris