Guys,
My computer throws a wobbly on me every now and then and I've pretty much become accustomed to the odd tantrum.
But tonight I went to shut it down and it came up with the usual screen that Winda's XP and said "Windows is shutting down"
That's where it stopped, the mouse and the keyboard froze, as did the tactile power switch on the case.
The only way I could stop it, was at the wall switch.
When I started it back up again, the mouse and keyboard refused to work.
So I re-booted it and it came back on, no problems now though.
This computer is getting really weird these days.
Anyone have any ideas what could be causing this to be happening?.
Perhaps it's not liking all this discount Electricity that I'm getting through working at the PoCo?.

There's the problem!

I used to find this problem with WIndows 98 (first edition) as well. It would often just freeze during the shutdown process. I never did figure out why.

It's hard to say on the information here, but questions you might ask are:

Is there anything running in the background that might be blocking it? Third-party tools or drivers?

Are you up-to-date with all your patches and is your anti-virus stuff working?

If your KB and mouse are USB devices then normally, just disconnecting them and plugging back in should do the trick.

Time to back up your important files. I had the same problem with M.E., before it died. It's last words to me were something about a missing .dll file and losing all my data to fix it.

Yeah,
Thanks for your help guys.
What ever happened to Windows ME?, it never got very good comments from anyone that I know that used it over here.

I went from 98 to M.E. and found it more stable, but I never heard anyone else who liked it. Perhaps I am just getting older and liked it because it was a very small change.

I also had dual boot, so from M.E. I just started using Linux. I have never tasted the sweet fruits of X.P., and never will.

It's often said that ME was a marketing-led version rather than being based on any worthwhile changes to the OS code. However, to be on sale in time to warrent its name, they probably squeezed the testing cycle to say the least.

You can crash it easily. For instance:

Go to a DOS prompt.

C:\>debug
-a
xxxx:0100 cli
xxxx:0101 jmp 100
xxxx:0103
-g

What this does is starts an endless loop, but also tells the CPU to ignore all other processes (cli = CLear Interrupts) It it quite like shorting a circuit.

Type this in on ME, 98, 95, Win 3.x or DOS running in something like Carousel and the computer will be stone dead. The loop will run and block out all other processes.

So, the equivalent is an incorrectly fused installation. There is inadequate protection from a local programming error in one process from spreading to affect others that use different memory spaces (a bit like other circuits)

Try it on any NT version (NT3.1, NT3.5, NT4, Win2000, Win2003, and XP) or on OS/2 and you can simply kill the process running the loop;
the behaviour is a lot more like an electical installation where each circuit is correctly protected by appropriate circuit breakers or fuses AND the correct assesments were made regarding discrimination, and therefore a local fault won't take out the whole supply.

That whole MS-DOS based family is not being developed now. All new versions, such as XP, are based on enhanced versions of the NT kernel.

I'm with you though: linux is cool. Like the very latest Windows, it too is fully-protected and goes even further by providing a truly multi-user environment.

It's better now, because more is included in the distributions. It's also the first time that I brought my computer home, plugged it in, and it worked - internet and email.

Still, it takes time to get everything running. I look at it as time taken to learn instead of to fix. It's also cheaper to buy a computer without Windows; and, no more charges for anti-virus and fire-wall. The help that's available on the internet reminds me of the help that's available on this message board - free and professional.

Your symptoms are typical of over heating or a power supply problem....

Open the case and check all power connections also make sure that the fan(s) and vents are clean.