windows shutdown

[fustrated]

Instead of shutting down, my os(98se) restart and lately(after I reformatted) the computer has be running extremely slowly. IE takes about 5 mins to load. Any help or thoughts.

[GaryRouth]

If you started over again from the beginning, completely reformatting the hard drive and reinstalling windows, with no other drives or partitions involved, it sounds like your installation did not go well.

Some things to check:
1) your Bios Setup settings (motherboard setup)
[download a manual for your motherboard if you don't have one]
2) make sure your motherboard's chipset drivers, and any other onboard device drivers, are installed.
3) start the machine in Safe Mode (tap the F8 key as the system is starting up, and see if it seems to run fine then. If so, you probably have some drivers misbehaving. Try updating what you can.
4) Use a bootable antivirus disk, to rule out a virus in the Bios or in the mbr.

You might want to test your hardware, too. You can test the memory with DocMemory http://www.simmtester.com You can download diagnostics for the hard drive from the website of the drive's manufacturer.

And - you can always start from scratch again, if you have backups of what you need. Scan the backups for viruses before you put them back in a clean install.

Best of luck
. . . Gary