SteveR wrote:
I'm having a problem (well, several problems, possibly) with shutting
down Windows 98SE on a semi-new motherboard.

System:

ECS NForce3A (v1.0A) motherboard (socket 754, NForce3 chipset)
Sempron 3000+ (1.8GHz)
1GB stick of Crucial PC3200 DDR
40GB Maxtor disk
PNY Geforce 6200 AGP/128MB
SonicXplosion sound card (= Terratec Six-pack, says so on the back of
the card)
Netgear FA310TX ethernet
USB 2.0 hub
Silver biscuit writer

I blew win98 on it, and everything was OK until I installed the sound
card drivers. After that, "Start|Shutdown|Shutdown" drops to the
black-and-orange "It's safe to switch off your computer" screen, and so
does "Start|Shutdown|Restart in MS-DOS mode". (Expected results: power
down, drop to a DOS prompt, respectively.) Restart works normally.

I've googled for answers, and half the things to try seem inapplicable,
as, for example, I don't have a "Plug and Play BIOS" in Device Manager.
Nothing else on the lists seems to make a difference.

It does seem to be specifically Windows 98SE (who knows, maybe plain
Win98 as well), as Windows 2000 shuts down normally on the same hardware
(by removable disk trays).

A second machine with a different sound card (PCWorld own-brand 5.1
card) and network card (Netgear FA311) hangs on normal shutdown, and
powers down on "shutdown-to-DOS".

Any ideas?

Create a Bootlog.txt file at the next cold start and then shutdown.

The file should show you where the process is failing to unhook/close
various bits of the OS.

Load it into Wordpad and search for the string "fail" which should find
(at least) "ndis2sup" and "SDVXD" items. Any more should be
investigated.

HNY & HTH


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