Windows 98se hanging

[Fozj]

I'm using Windows 98se, with IE 6 and OE 6, Zone Alarm firewall and AVG antivirus. My problem is when I have OE 6 open, click on a link in an email, which opens IE 6, after closing the IE 6 link and then closing OE 6, then try to open IE 6, I get an airglass with my cursor. When I open task manager it says explorer not responding. When I click on end task in task mgr, Explorer will not close. I try ctrl,alt,delete and sometimes it will reboot computer, and at times I have to hold the on button to manually shut down. A few days ago I was trying to get it to reboot and computer booted to a message that MSVCRT.DLL in C:\windows\system folder was not found "reinstall windows". I copied the dll from another computer and that fixed that, but I'm thinking if computer keeps hanging it will lose this file again or worse.Everything else works good on this computer. I run AdAware and Spybot Search&destroy regulary. I think there is a conflict between OE 6 and IE 6 being open at the same time, but have not been able to find remedy on Google.

Thanks for any help, Foz

[ldb]

Pare down your startup programs in msconfig.

Dump that resource hog zone alarm and go to the free version of Outpost.

http://www.majorgeeks.com/download1056.html

run the IE repair tool:

http://www.xtra.co.nz/help/0,,4130-1292662,00.html

you did not give any PC specs

If you try to close Explorer with task manager, your computer will lock up.

[Fozj]

I will give the repair tool a try. Will post again if problem is fixed.

Thanks, Foz

[DeadDude]

Here's something to try...

open progman.exe... it is in your windows folder...

next time it locks up, go ahead and kill explorer.exe

progman.exe can be your shell... and then just go to file... run... and browse to explorer.exe to get your start menu back...

Here's something you should do...

Go to folder options and click the "open new windows as a seperate process" or whatever the option actually is (it is close enough to figure out)... this way, the start menu and desktop is a seperate process from all the other explorer windows... it uses a little bit more ram (I think), but can be slightly more stable this way.

[soporific]

IF you ever see that a file is missing that should be there ... its a good idea to check out the health of your hard drive. Have you done a surface scan and confirmed no bad sectors?

[pcalvert]

I'm using Windows 98se, with IE 6 and OE 6, Zone Alarm firewall and AVG antivirus. My problem is when I have OE 6 open, click on a link in an email, which opens IE 6, after closing the IE 6 link and then closing OE 6, then try to open IE 6, I get an airglass with my cursor. When I open task manager it says explorer not responding. When I click on end task in task mgr, Explorer will not close. I try ctrl,alt,delete and sometimes it will reboot computer, and at times I have to hold the on button to manually shut down. A few days ago I was trying to get it to reboot and computer booted to a message that MSVCRT.DLL in C:\windows\system folder was not found "reinstall windows". I copied the dll from another computer and that fixed that, but I'm thinking if computer keeps hanging it will lose this file again or worse.Everything else works good on this computer. I run AdAware and Spybot Search&destroy regulary. I think there is a conflict between OE 6 and IE 6 being open at the same time, but have not been able to find remedy on Google.

Thanks for any help, Foz

When I was using Windows 98 SE my computer would lock up several times a week, seemingly at random. Eventually, I realized that IE was always open when it happened. So I disabled Active Desktop and stopped using IE. After that, my computer ran quite nicely. IMHO, IE deserves its "Internet Exploder" reputation.

Phil