Shutdown time extended

[h1052]

My PC's Shutdown time just increased from 5 seconds to 30 seconds or so. It pauses at a black screen (with a blinking cursor on the top left corner of the screen) then display my custom shutdown screen for 1 second and finally power off. Can someone help me on this?

My PC:
AMD Thunderbird 900MHz, 192 MB SDRAM, ASUS V7100 MX2 32MB on Abit KT7 with RAID
Running WinME with system Restore uninstalled(through the Run dialog box).

Recent changes to the system:
1. Enabled Wakeup Alarm in BIOS and run Mstask so that my PC play songs to wake me up. (within 3 weeks)
2. Setup Serial Direct Cable Connection (It's working fine). (Within 2 weeks)
3. Added a USB extension slot (from motherboard) hooking to a Flash Drive and an 3-Axis Analog Joypad (Within 2 weeks)
4. Added a T10/100 network card (Realtek chipset) but I haven't configured it correctly yet (I don't know how;p) (within 1 week)

I am not sure since when my PC began to shutdown so slowly, perhaps within 2 weeks.

Thanks in advance!

[osprey4]

You're certainly on the right track. I'm guessing it's the network card. Since you're not using it yet, you could try to manually set an IP address and see if that helps.

[h1052]

Thanks osprey4, I set the IP manually but it's still like that. Do I need to set both machines and connect them? They are currently not connected to eachother.

And uh, I don't know this is related or a separate issue: When I press the standby key on my keyboard, it pops up a message that says Hibernate or standby is not possible because one of the USB device does not support low power mode. I unplug the USB devices one by one and press the standby key. First is the extension wire to my Flash Drive, won't go to standby. Then my Joypad, still cannot. When I unplug my 3 weeks old LG USB Optical Scroll mouse(I missed this one out in the last post), bingo! My baby went to sleep. However the system crashed after I put the mouse back when it woke up. I thought USB devices are supposed to be plug and play?

Ps. I have limited access to the net. Sorry if my responses are late. Thank you.