You have encountered the now infamous W98 SE Shutdown Bug.  Many of our new
Dells had this bug in one form or another (not as they came from the
factory, but after we made a few changes).  The best support coverage of
this multi-faceted problem that I have come across is at Windows Magazine
on-line.  Go to www.winmag.com and type "w98 shutdown bug" into the search
box and you will receive pointers to "Hotfixes:Windows Shutdown Problems".
This document has pointers to the Microsoft patch files as well as a number
of different potential solutions.  This information has helped me fix this
bug on a number of different type PCs.  The problem is with W98 SE and the
solution can be a very involved process of trial and error although in
several instances just installing the patch has cleared things immediately.

HTH,
Anthony

> A client just purchased an HP Pavilion 6545C computer and brought it to me
> to load up a pile of software titles, install a NetGear FA310TX NIC, and
do
> some organization for him.  I setup a permanent swap file, installed all
of
> the software, installed the NIC, installed all windows 98 SE updates,
> updated Office 97 to SR-2b, ran ScanDisk and DeFrag.  After I finished all
> of that, I shut down the computer.  But, it hangs at the "Windows is
> shutting down" screen.  The only way to get it to shut off is yanking the
> plug or holding the OFF button in for 5-10 seconds.  Upon reboot,
everything
> is OK - no Scandisk or any note of not closing Windows properly.  I have
> repeatedly shutdown and rebooted with it consistently freezing at the
> shutting down screen.  I went to the HP 6500 Series Users Forum and saw at
> least 6 postings describing the same problem.  Some suggestions, none of
> which helped.  One was to disable hardware power control in BIOS, which I
> did

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