Windows98 acting squirrelly

Hey Geeks!

A funny thing happened on the way to the forum...uh, that's not it. Here are my specs right off the bat (disregard the ones in my sig...I'm on a different computer): Gateway Solo2500 laptop, Celeron 400mhz, 298MB RAM, 6 Gig HD, Windows98se...running Avast, KerioPF, RAMIdleLE.

So, yesterday I installed the drivers for a newly purchased SadDisk Cruzer Mini memory stick. Things went a-ok. I loaded the drivers, rebooted, and transfered some files. No probs for the whole day. At the end of the day I shut down the computer (it hung at the "Windows is shutting down" page, but it does that from time to time...no worries).

This morning, however, when I rebooted my computer things went kinda crazy. First, the blue scandisk page said it found an error and repaired it. Second, before booting I got a message saying "vsdata95.vxd" couldn't be found (I googled that upon finally booting up and solved that problem). Third, when I did get booted up, my desktop had reverted to a way way previous incarnation...maybe a year or so back. The above mentioned running programs, did not load up. Avast, when I tried to load it up, asked for a registration number (I already registered it) and when I retyped it in, it said that the number is invalid. Kerio, when I tried starting it, gave me an error saying, "KFE initialization failed: driver not found." Other aps I have (i.e. A(squared)) are also asking for registration numbers. In my Add/Remove programs there are programs listed that I had long since removed (i.e. Norton Corporate Edition), but when I try to remove them "files aren't found."

What do you guys think is up?

 

Yep, I used regedit for the vdx issue. Things were going OK...I was reinstalling things like you said. Had everything working pretty much the same as before. Seemed like smooth sailing ahead...BUT

I had installed an IME to type and read Japanese before the vdx problem occured...and I hadn't had any problems with it. Well, when I tried to open it up after fixing the vdx problem, I got an error with the Windows Explorer. I shut the computer down and rebooted. I thought I'd just have to reinstall the IME like I had reinstalled everything else...well, after installing the IME and rebooting, everything I tried to open triggered an error with Windows Explorer. I can't do anything with the computer now.

Any ideas how I can fix this? And, I promise if and when it's fixed, I won't try to install that IME!

(If I can't get it running, no worries there...I'd been planning to format the drive and install SuSE 9.1 Personal on it anyway, so this just gives me a good excuse to do so. )

Thanks for your help.

 

Sorry to bump this...

But, does anyone have an idea about how to fix the above Windows Explorer problem? I tried running in Safe Mode and uninstalling the IME, but that didn't work. What do you think I should do?

Thanks.