Need of urgent help here

I need someone to help diagnose and if possible, tell me the cure to this problem. The problem that I am facing is simple and easy to describe. When I am at the desktop with all the icons, if I press either Internet Explorer, My Documents, and My Computer, I get a message saying that Explorer had made an illegal operation and my wallpaper turns to white and I have to reset it. I am used to Illegal Operations because my operating system is Windows 98 but this one is preventing me from opening those documents and getting on Internet Explorer and everytime I try to open it, Explorer crashes. It's been doing this all day and I tried everything to try to fix it. I am not new to computers but I have never encountered this problem before. I can get on all other programs just fine without any problems even on the instant message programs. One of my online buddies had saved me a lot of trouble by giving me FoxFire browser to get online. I ran Nortan Anti-Virus and it did find two Trojan Viruses and got rid of them but nothing changed. Are those Viruses linked to doing that to your computer?

 

If norton found 2 trojans you may want to run it again to be safe making shure it is upgraded. Do you got a 98 disk. If so you can reinstall it. It wont erase anything but if something is missing it will fix it.

 

IMHO, a re-install may be drastic for what may be a simple problem. Since you have a browser, go to the spyware section and D/L, update and run SpyBot search and destroy. I would also suggest that you D/L, install and update SpyWare Blaster also. This program prevents a lot of malware from ewver getting into your computer. Also D/L, update, install and run AdAware SE from the same section. Remove anything that these programs find. they are trustworthy.

See if this helps you. It certainly has kept my WinME box clean, and cleaned it up good when I first installed them. They are all free here at MajorGeeks in the spyware section on the homepage.

Also, and this is just my opinion, Norton and Win9x are not a good combination. There are numerous AV programs here that are better, use less resources, and auto update.

 

Hey thanks for the help. I'll try the Spybot also. I uninstalled it awhile ago since it wasn't working, but I'll try again.

 

I tried the Window's 98 disk and the Spybot but they didn't get rid of the problem.

 

Try an online scan at www.housecall.trendmicro.com . See what they find and/or remove. If you are on 56k this will take a while, but it is worth it. If it is not a trojan or virus...???????

 

After all the advice above and after you have got Trend to check out your computer I suggest that you try running System File Checker. Have your w98 Cd handy - go to Start Run and type 'sfc' without the quotes. Good reliable old w98 will then go thru the hoops and check out all your system files and if it finds a crook file will invite you to install a shiny new one from the W98 disk.
Like the remarks above when I had Norton installed with W98' the system ran unhappily and if the AV prog is what you are using I would look to Avast or AVG both good both free and both quickly updated.
Hope this helps
Robert

 

The micro trends' scanner is not working. It sends me to a "Page Not Found" page.

 

I just found out that it is a virus by someone who knows computers but Nortan Antivirus doesn't detect it. I need a free Anti-Virus. Which one is the best one?

 

IMHO, I think that overall Avast! (found free in AV section on main page) does this best job for me. AVG does a better job at resident protection I think though. Either one will do a very good job, AND use way less resources than Norton. If you are going to remove Norton be sure to follow the instructions found on their web site.

 

I haven't used AVAST yet, but I had trouble with AVG6.0 even after several re-installations, it never ran right and may have been due to conflicting programs. Not sure...
Had Norton, what a waste! I'll never run that again unless they make considerable improvements in the future.
I have had good luck however with AntiVir. It just found another trojan hiding in a new application I downloaded today. My hat goes off to AntiVir Personal the free version found here at MG. Just for the info.... CT