My desktop consists of: MoBo: Intel-DG965SS, CPU: Intel-D805, DRAM: 2X512 MB 800 MHz DDR-2, HDD: Seagate-250 GB sata-2, Monitor: Dell-1905FP 19inch LCD, Writer: Sony- DVD writer, Accessory: Leadtek Winfast Palmtop TV tuner box. OS: Windows XP pro SP-2. Bios set for 128 MB of video ram. I am not into gaming, however I do convert and edit video files and do the usual ppt, xls, doc, cdr, etc. work. I have the MTNL triband 399 connection giving me 450-420 kbps broadband. Currently, for the last few days, I have been facing 'shut down' issues. After the shut down is initiated, various systems shut down but the power does NOT switch off. I am forced to hold down the power button on the box for six seconds before everything shuts down. After checking out on the internet, I amended the 'registry' so that the Hkey Local Machine-Software-Microsoft-Windows NT-CurrentVersion-Winlogon-PowerdownAfterShutdown value was changed from '0' to '1'. After a couple of times of shut down and cold booting, I did find the problem disappear, only to reappear later on. I am at my wits end, since now I cannot just do the shut down and walk away. As such the whole process takes over 60 seconds. Please guide me on what I can do to resolve this issue other than format and re-load the C: drive. The later will take me five hours of loading and re-setting. There is another related issue of 'memory usage'. Though I have 1 GB of DRAM, I find that the Ctrl-Alt-Del-Performance tab shows almost 500 MB of available 'physical memory' during normal working. Even if I am running the antivirus software on system, or doing a 'defrag' or running many applications simultaneously, the available physical memory rarely goes below 300 MB. Yet the above applications run slow considering that so much spare ram is lying unused. I have set the C: drive virtual memory at 'system managed size' and 'processor scheduling' at 'programs' and 'memory usage' at 'programs'. Please guide me on how to maximize memory usage. Its only when I run 'google earth' that I find the 'available physical memory' drops down to below 100 MB, indicating that I am using it efficiently. Kindly guide me on these two issues.