w2k professional - problem with shutdown- restart

[riptof]

Not sure if this is right forum, but hope someone can help.

I have w2K professional sm4 with latest hot fixes - AMD 2500+
on asus a7v8x-x motherboard. Ialso run Norton Util and Norton Antivirus.

Things have been working fine until recently. I noticed after shutdown that the Active desktop was all mixed up. It did have a button to Restore Active Desktop. But when I tried to shutdown/restart it simply powered down.

When Irebooted manually, had same issue with Active desktop, same issue with shut down/restart.

Have seen other posts where shutdown always did a restart - would not power down, but thatisn't the problem.

I believe it's a virus of some sort. Have done CCleaner and fixed some issues. Have no issues according to CCleaner now. Also ran Norton Windoctor which shows no issues.

Anyone have ideas?
TIA
riptof.

[Sterling_Aug]

Yes, run better anti-virus and anti-spyware programs:

http://www.sysopt.com/forum/showthread.php?t=161595

[Ol'Tunzafun]

A few more things you can try if it comes up clean and the problem persists:

Startup in Safe Mode and run CHKDSK /R from the command prompt. It will have to be restarted in order to run but it will be interesting to see if it will restart from Safe Mode, but even shutting down and restarting should meet CHKDSK's requirements.

It is also possible that the last thing that you installed is causing mayhem in the startup/shutdown sequence. Since W2K doesn't have MSCONFIG, download Autoruns (http://www.sysinternals.com/utilities/autoruns.html) from Systernals and see if you can find something that has just recently been added. Unchecking an item disables it, so try unchecking as many as you like until the problem stops, just don't disable Explorer or your Windows session will end.

You could also just disable Active Desktop (http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000593.htm) .