Windows Wont Shut Down?

Rezzy47 asks:

" I'm running Windows XP Home Edition on a Dell 8200 Desktop computer. Every time I attempt to run ScanDisk [CHKDSK] on one of my hard drives, Windows gives me the message, ' Please wait while windows restarts ... ', but never does. I have to shut the computer down manually by turning off the power. Is there any solution to this problem? "

My response:

I know that the "shut down" feature under Windows hasn't worked properly since the days of Windows 95 ... but I figured that Microsoft licked this problem once-and-for-all with Windows XP. I guess not.

Unfortunately, I don't have a sure-fire solution for Rezzy47. The first thing I would do in this case (if it hasn't been done already) is to install the latest Windows XP Service Pack (1) and bug fixes.  I also tried searching the Microsoft Knowledge Base but wasn't able to pick up anything concrete.

http://support.microsoft.com

Aside from that, my third guess would be to visit the Dell web site for a fix. The shutdown problem could very well be related to a hardware for that model of computer -- or maybe even be caused by a pre-loaded program Dell put on the machine (at the factory) that isn't exiting properly at shut down.

Update 2004/01/21: This problem has been updated. Click here to read!