this just happened a few days ago. After I installed direct x 9.0c it hangs at every restart/shut down. I reinstalled a fresh copy of windows XP and it still does the same darn thing. I'm pretty sure it's not one of the software drivers causing the problem. I can shut down and restart perfectly in win98SE but XP is hanging all the time. If anyone has any similar scenerio and has fix something like this, please help me find a solution.