Hello everyone! I'm posting because I have a problem with my old Dell Dimension L1000R. It's a great little [old] PC, and a couple of months ago, I formatted it, put back the Windows ME [legal] that came with it on it, and have been using it sort of as an emulator machine... I have all sorts of games on it, and am using it exclusively as an old classic gaming pc... It's been working perfectly, and I had it exactly how I wanted... it started up in a mere 30 seconds, ran everything perfectly, and has been working great. However, two days ago, I took it into a shop to get a better graphics card. I ended up paying 20 bucks for a cheap 8mb ATI Rage Pro graphics card. Everything is working I suppose, but now, the PC will not shut down properly. When I shut it down, it acts like everything is working fine, and shuts down as before, but now, it looks like it shuts down, but it's not - it stays on a black screen after Windows exits. No prompt, no blinking underscore, no nothing! However, when I plug in the monitor on the older [built in] graphics card on the back, there is a black screen, with a little blinking underscore. No words, no nothing. It won't let me type anything in, either.

Now, to completely shut off the computer, after it goes to this black screen of nothingness, I either unplug it or hold the power button down for a couple of seconds. I wouldn't mind this, but... now everytime I turn it back on, it runs scan disk, saying that there was an improper shutdown detected... Not cool.

Any help or ideas would be much obliged.

Hi Falciase, welcome to the PCHF.

No doubt your computer is set to "hibernate" instead of shutdown...however, it's been a very long time since i used any 9x operating system, so i'm going to be going off a distant memory...

If you right click on the desktop and goto Properties, Screen Saver and then Power...if it's there, you might see some options to change regarding shutdown/startup.

Then again, it has been almost 10 years...almost.

On the outside, it could just be the drivers not liking ME...i know that ME is the worst OS that has ever been released from Microsoft. To have it running stable for you is nothing short of a miracle, and any chances done to it might be cause all sorts of issues.

mmm, thanks for the idea, but that's not it. Before I had the new card in, it shutdown perfectly. After getting the new card, and without me changing anything regarding shutdown/hibernation, it's now messing up. Even the green light that says the PC is on turns off when it "shuts down," but the PC still makes the little whirring noise, and you know it's on. It has something to do with the old graphics card, I know it - After the PC fake shuts down, and if you unplug the monitor from the new graphics card to the OLD one, there is a black screen DOS screen with no prompt, and a single, blinking underscore... Maybe I should look into the driver settings from the control panel...

The thing with the old video card, that is what i'd expect to see. When you have a card plugged into PCI/AGP, that takes priority and the onboard autoatically disables, so there's no conflicts.