After an aborted spyware installation, you likely have a lot of orphaned files running around clogging up the works. A couple of things to try:
1) Turn back the clock on the registry by opening a command prompt and type in scanreg/restore. Choose a time prior to the problem.
2) Back up your files and reinstall 98.
To start, my system specs:
IBM Thinkpad - i Series
Windows 98
500 MHz Intel Celeron
64MB of RAM
6 GB of Hard Drive Space total
I am having a problem with my Desktop/Explorer... it seems that when I click the
My Computer icon, it doesn't respond at all. Everything on my desktop works fine
except any direct shortcut/icon that opens up an Explorer window.
It all started when my computer was attacked with spyware/adware... I saw on my IE
taskbar that some crud was installing itself... so I figured, "Heh, these low-budget
punks can't install the program if I shut the laptop off..." so I held the power
button, and it shut off. I turn it back on, I see some spyware/adware stuff on my
desktop. So I shut down the laptop again. I reload the laptop in safe mode and use
Ad-Aware 6 to remove it all. I also remove the Startup List entries in my registry
that were related to the spyware/adware. I figured that the job was done and I could
continue on with what I was doing earlier.
I restart again, everything seems normal... until I click My Computer... it doesn't
respond at all. I try again a couple of seconds later... STILL no response. I begin
to get aggrivated. Everything on my desktop worked fine, except any direct shortcut/icon
that would open up an Explorer window. So I restarted again... and ran a Norton AntiVirus
scan with the latest virus defs. It couldn't find anything. I even try reinstalling
Windows 98 to see if it'd fix the problem. Still no go.
I've also tried Spybot... still no luck.
I use my IE browser to access my files... and it seems that the delete key doesn't
function. If I try to click My Computer, Control Panel, or Windows Explorer after
some time, my system becomes extremely slow...
Now, I only have one possible reason for my problem...
I've noticed that when Explorer crashes and the Illegal Operation window pops up...
I believe that most of the time, the fault is the Visual Basic 6 Runtime DLL, as
it's name/file is in the window. "KERN386.EXE" (dunno if that's right, it had to
do with Kernel) got an illegal operation as well...
What is the problem? Is it a virus? Has a system file been corrupted? Any help/ideas
appreciated, thanks.

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