The link Icarus provides has not been responding so I don't know what it says. I may be wrong but I think that the fast shutdown options are the same (enabled/disabled) in Win98 and Win98 SE, only the default setting has changed. See
http://support.microsoft.com/default...;EN-US;q202633
for instructions on disabling fast shutdown in Win98. I don't have ME in front of me now so I can't check if applicable in ME. The analogous ME shutdown problem troubleshooting page,
http://support.microsoft.com/default...;EN-US;q273746 ,
doesn't mention it but it might be worth trying the Win98 directions. If that fails then see what the registry data value is for HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Shutdown
Other ME shutdown problems and possible solutions are discussed here:
http://www.aumha.org/a/shtdwnmez.htm