In common with so many other Win98SE users, I have continually suffered from this problem of hang-up at shutdown. A solution is to watch the hard disk activity light (if you have one). If you get to the page which says "Windows is shutting down" but the hard disk lamp goes out for more than 15 seconds, just switch off the main power to the computer and switch it back on again 10 seconds later. I have never found this to cause any problem.
However, prompted by this thread, I looked into the matter a bit more. I was having this problem about 1 shutdown in every 5. So I looked for a download of a fix, and from various internet sites was directed to a programme called Shutdown Now. This was quite widely advertised as available for a free download, but each time I tried it I was directed to an obscure German T-Mobile site.
Eventually I found a source at this url :-
This was, as you will note, via PC World.
The download was about 1.5 mb., and was a WINZIP file.
You have to unzip it, and then run the resulting .exe file which is generated (this is the installation program).
I am still evaluating this program, but thus far have experienced not a single failure to shut down correctly.
It seems clear from the previously posted comprehensive material that, while a WIN 98SE based problem, it manifrests itself in different ways, depending on your PC configuration, and in particular the number of mapped drives one has. I can only comment that so far Shutdown Now works fine for me.
colin 4228