Hello, I'm Johnny Crash - but seriously, folks, I need help!

Hello, group. I'm sorry my reason for joining with you today isn't to share my technical knowledge or expertise (I don't really have any - digital aerial photography, yes - computers, not so much), but rather I'm here to ask for your kind consideration of my plight. I'm an artist, you see, and not a computer wizard by any stretch.

I've had this old "spud box" (Micron Millennium PC) since, well, it's going on nearly ten years now and I've made lots of improvements to it over those years (all by myself, I'm proud to say) but lately I've been needing external storage capability and none of the hardware I could find would work with the W98SE system. So, I started searching the net, you know, and came across a few good prospects that required adding this or that (drivers, etc.) and thought maybe I could teach this old dog some new tricks, after all.

But in my search I also came across what seemed like might be a good first step, a tune-up of sorts - I downloaded and installed the WINDOWS 98SE 2.1a SERVICE PACK from this website and installed it. But now as a result of that (the horror) instead of any measurable improvement, my system has since been in the tank. I can no longer open my programs that I rely on to perform my work.

Everything is very nearly helter skelter. I'm lucky at least that I can still use my Firefox browser, although there are weird issues with it as well and the appearance has changed (not good). My upgraded sound system has disappeared from the start up and can't use it to play anything (icons don't work). Simple PC sounds do still work, though not the start-up sound - I think what sound there is is coming from the old Vortex system I used to run. MS Word is working but not Photoshop or any of the other add on programs. I keep getting error boxes or alerts to missing EXE, DLL, or "personalization" files.

When starting the PC, I'll get an ominous black screen with white letters: CANNOT FIND A DEVICE FILE THAT MAYBE NEEDED TO RUN WINDOWS (yadda yadda yadda - it mentions replacing a missing INI file but doesn't say which one) and ends with: CMMON VXD. - PRESS ANY KEY TO CONTINUE.
Now, I did go to add/remove programs and deleted the offending "WIN98SE 2.1a Service Pack" but that hasn't changed anything, everything is still weird.

OK, so now I'm about as low as I can be. I'm also experiencing all sorts other problems (Oiy - If I could afford a new PC right now I'd get one, you know) so all I'm asking for here is just some technical advice on what I should do or might try at this point - if there's a reasonable fix of any kind I might employ to at least get the machine back running the way it was. Any help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks guys.

 

Thanks for the greeting, Kes! I'll take your advice and re-post in the Software section. Thanks again.

TC

 

:wave and welcome to MG's..