I have a problem with my Dell Laptop. If I try to stop it it wnt shut off. I have to us the on/off button and press it for some time, than it will shut off.

I have Windows XP Home (SP2).

It happen mostly when I add a device such as my Ipod with harddisk to the USB ports.

Can anyone give me a clue what to do to get this working as it should ?

Regards from Netherlands

When you add a USB device while Windows is running, you should use the "Safely Remove Hardware" wizard to remove the device before you shut Windows down.
There is an icon in the task bar {grey rectangle with a green arrow above it} put there just for this purpose.
Just unplugging USB devices won't hurt the machine physically, but it can mess up the software.

I know this and always do it like you suggest, it is not caused by this.

After some research, it seems this type of problem has occured in the past due to a BIOS problem.
Check the Dell website and see if there is a BIOS update for your laptop.

I was the one who posted this message. In the meantime I found 2 solutions :
1. I found out that it was a Window XP problem, probably I lost part of XP that made my computer act like described. I ran the original XP disc over the old program and after that it worked perfectly again. I did not erase  but just repaired it. All the other programs were still there, I had tro do some settings like time, date etc etc. Took me about an hour.

2 Before this I installed a shareware program called "superfast shutdown". If you google "superfastshutdown" you will find how to install this program. I alway shut my laptop down with this and it always shut the computer all the way. Later I reinstalled the XP disc. And now I can again use the normal shutdown procedure too.

For your info I always use the remove hardware icon before unhooking my USB equipment.