Shutdown Problems After Upgrade

No problem at all upgrading IE to 6.0 on a similar system, although with Win98SE, it's generally a good idea to do a thorough disk cleanup and a DOS level cleanup * of the Temp files, prior to making such a change. I'd be inclined to suspect the printer software, as a result. I'm more concerned about that ancient BIOS version (A11 being the most current) and the low RAM quantity (128 MB is the minimum I'd recommend on an XPST with Win98SE - 256 to 384MB works much better) on there, though.

Regarding using the power button to shut down, I'd try to avoid making a habit of it. See this for help in resolving that shutdown problem.

*To thoroughly clean up the Temp files, run disk cleanup from Windows first, then restart in MS-DOS mode. At the C:\ prompt, type deltree C:\windows\tempor~1 and press Enter. Confirm Yes at the prompt, and wait for the cleanup to finish, then reboot to return to Windows, using Ctrl-Alt-Del. (The cleanup could take a while, depending on how much junk is on the drive. I've seen it take close to an hour on a 20GB drive that had never been properly cleaned.) When it's finished, you'll be returned to the C:\ prompt. Make sure this has occurred, to be certain the job is done. It's a good idea to run this routine both before and after any major software installation/upgrade, under Win9X operating systems, and changing versions of IE is generally considered to be a major installation.

Goonboy

Thanks for the reply.

My current thinking regarding this problem is that if it persists I will uninstall the printer software (which presumably will also uninstall the downloaded patch) and then reinstall the original printer software from the CD.  I will not download the patch since its advertised benefits are very minor.

Incidentally, I am generally not too comfortable executing commands in DOS.  As an alternative method, is it also possible using Windows Explorer to highlight the files in the C:\Windows\Temp folder and then deleting them?

You'd be far better off just running the DOS command to clean that stuff up, particularly if it's never been done before. You could spend the next two weeks trying to locate all the files via Windows Explorer, and even then, you probably wouldn't be able to locate all of them.

That's a very simple routine to run there, and as long as you type the command exactly as it appears, there's nothing to worry about. DOS is nothing to be intimidated by, and getting used to working with it just makes everything a lot easier.

There's a space between "deltree" and "C," other than that, everything's all run together.
At the C:\ prompt, type deltree C:\windows\tempor~1 - press Enter. At the [yn] type Y and press Enter.

When it's done, it'll bring you back to a C:\ prompt. Restart the system at that point.

Thanks for the ideas.

I seem to have solved my Windows 98SE shutdown problem with a variation on the suggestion found here http://aumha.org/win4/a/shutdown.htm under "Fast Shutdown Revisited - Literally!"

Step 1. Click "Start/Programs/Accessories/System Tools/System Information/Tools/System Configuration Utility/Advanced" and then enable fast shutdown by unclicking "Disable Fast Shutdown"

Step 2. Close open applications.

Step 3. Click "Start/Shutdown/Restart"  For me, the third click in this step must be "Restart" not "Shutdown"  If the computer freezes at any time after clicking "Restart" I press the power button.

After the computer restarts, I go to Step 4.

Step 4. Click "Start/Programs/Accessories/System Tools/System Information/Tools/System Configuration Utility/Advanced" and then disable fast shutdown by clicking "Disable Fast Shutdown"

Step 5. Close open applications

Step 6. Click "Start/Shutdown/Restart"  For me, the third click in this step must be "Restart" not "Shutdown"

After the computer restarts, I am able to shutdown the computer in the normal manner by clicking "Start/Shutdown/shutdown.

If at any time after performing these six steps I get one of those blue screen fatal exception messages, I usually need to repeat the above six steps to get the computer to shut down normally again.