My OS is W98SE. Somehow, I managed to get into a position in which my shutdown loops into startup. In other words, when I go thru the shutdown routine, instead of shutting down, the computer goes thru its reboot cycle. I have to manually kill the power during the reboot cycle. If anyone reading this can help with ideas about the problem, I will appreciate it. A friend suggests my registery shutdown routine may be corrupted. If that is the case, how do I correct it. Would a reinstall of W98 do the trick? Thanks all for reading this far, and thanks to thread administrators for letting me go off topic...Sherm

Hi Sherm. I had the same problem on a Windows98 machine for months. I tried everything I could think of, and got many other suggestions from the forum at windows-help.com. There were patches from Microsoft and setting changes and and and....The problem was a failing and/or cheap power supply. It was an eMachine and that was where the company really cut their production expenses. I couldn't just change the power supply because their case was smaller than most and wouldn't accept a regular ATX ps.I transferred all the internals (motherboard, drives, etc) to an old Gateway case, using the old Gateway power supply that was in it. Problem solved. May or may not be your problem but it is possible. Apparently, if the power supply is overheated or even THINKS it's overheated, it will turn the machine back on when you try and turn it off.Phil

Fascinating. I would never have thought of that. I'll look into it.Thanks!Sherm

A reinstallation of Win98 may fix your problem. I had this problem quite awhile ago when Win98 was first released. I had one computer using Win98 (first release) which I updated with a Microsoft CD to eliminate first release problems. It was then that the reboot problem started. I tried all the tricks to no avail. I just ignored the issue for some time.My son introduced a mean virus into this computer so I reformatted the hardrive and reinstalled Win98SE (second edition). This solved the reboot problem.I think the Win98 to update caused the problem. Some individual memory location wasn't set properly so it would cause the reboots. Somehow the Win98SE didn't have the problem. That is why I shy away from OS upgrades, i.e., Win98 to WinXP.

My 2 cents - I had occasional reboots on shutdown ever since I changed to GF$ TI 4200 on my old system. Seemingly fixed problem by checking the "Disable NVRAM/ESCD updates" in the System Devices/PLug and Play Bios in the Device manager. For me at least it appears to be software (i.e. Nvidia drivers) related.

Thanks to everyone for advice and help. I took the easy way out and reinstalled W98SE...problem solved...Sherm

I'll bet that cleaned out registry makes things boot faster too!!! It won't take too long to foul it up again though! :-lol