First, allow me publically to thank Steve D., A. Mains, Jim Rohacek II, Simon Heaton and Salman Khiliji for their responses and contributions to what happily has turned out to be A SOLUTION TO THE SHUT-DOWN PROBLEM!! So that my experience may be of some help to others encountering the same difficulty, I have set ot below some of the pertinent details respecting the problem and its solution at least for me: 1. I'm running something of a cutting edge machine here what with an Intel D850EMV2 board, a P4 2.26 Ghz (533 FSB) and 256 MB RDRAM, PC1066. I'd had SuSE 7.3 on another system for about 9 months with no problems whatsoever. Attempting to install 7.3 on this newer system the boot process would die when trying to pick up the processor, so I decided to install 8.0 instead to avoid the problem. The installation from the ftp site after creating the boot disk and modules went flawlessly. But when I'd go to turn off the computer, the system would stall after completing its shut down routine. There would be the cursor blinking at me but nothing further. I approached the list seeking a solution but all solutions suggested failed for one reason or other. Here is the solution that worked. 2. Salman Khiliji had directed me to the document, SMP Kernel Is Installed Despite Existing Single Processor Motherboard. This document recommends the replacement of the SMP kernel which one must confirm having installed using the uname -a command, and its subsequent uninstallation and replacement by the standard kernel using YaST2. THAT IS AS FAR AS THE DOCUMENT GOES. NOT ONLY DOES IT FAIL TO NAME THE REPLACEMENT KERNEL CORRECTLY (IT CALLS IT k_dflt WHILE YaST2 IDENTIFIES IT AS k_deflt) IT FAILS TO MENTION TAKING THE ADDITIONAL STEPS OF ENTERING mk_initrd FOLLOWED BY lilo AT A COMMAND PROMPT. THE DOCUMENT SIMPLY ALLEGES THAT THINGS WILL AUTOMATICALLY UPDATE WHEN, IN FACT, ENTERING THESE COMMANDS AFTER INSTALLATION WAS ESSENTIAL TO MY OBTAINING A POSITIVE RESULT. I'D FAILED ASSUMING AUTOMATIC UPDATING. 3. Therefore I would urge the powers that be at SuSE to revise the document in question, properly identifying the package in question and suggesting that these additional command line steps might be essential to success. John Lowell