I had this problem of shutdown/re-start with Win 98 many months ago. MS issued a patch for it eventually. One quick fix that worked for some people was to click on RUN from the destop start button and type in msconfig and then click OK. From the resulting window, click on ADVANCED and check or uncheck the little box with Disable Fast Shutdown next to it. Be sure to shutdown and come back up to try this. If it does not work then re-set it like it was. I do not know if this msconfig is available in Win2000 or not, but you could take a look. GOOD LUCK!!