WIN 98SE shutdown problem

[Calli]

I bought a Dell Inspiron 3500 several years ago used and it has never given me any problems. It has 192mb RAM. This past week though it has refused to go beyond the WINDOWS logo for shutting down. It just hangs and I can hear the hard drive trying to do something. I end up turning off the power and then it has to go through the error messages at boot up. I have the 98SE software cd. Will reinstalling over the OS fix this problem?

[classicsoftware]

You should start by reading the MS-KB article on Problems Shutting Down Windows 98 Second Edition (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q238096/).

[Sylvander]

You could begin with some good housekeeping.

Use the FREE Emergency Boot CD [EBCD] (http://www.pcguide.com/vb/showthread.php?t=41485)...

1. Run "MS Scandisk" [2nd menu] to scan all of the internal partitions/drives and fix any problems found in the file system.
It's worth doing this routinely at regular intervals just to check that all's well.

2. Run the "Win98/ME Registry Tool" to backup the registry and scan it for errors and fix any found.

If you haven't recently changed any hardware, or installed/uninstalled any new software, you could try using
C:\>scanreg /restore
at a "Command Prompt Only" at startup [or using 2 above] to "jump back" to a previous good set of configuration files [made on the 1st boot of the day the problem 1st appeared].

If you had an image backup of the Windows partition [C:]...
Restoring that would take you back to a time when all was well with the software.
If that didn't fix it you'd know it was [not a software problem, but] a hardware/BIOS problem.
There a FREE trial copy of "Image for DOS" included on the EBCD that you could use to image backup C: to an internal partition other than C:
Assuming you haven't made any image backups before now, using that you can at least get the software back to the way it is now [better than nothing].

To check that all's well with the hardware, load and run Knoppix from a "Knoppix Linux Live CD".