Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

General discussion

Possible Stupid IE6/ Windows Explorer Incompatibility?

by hfguide May 23, 2005 11:11AM PDT

Specs: Windows 98, had 64MB of RAM, upgraded to 255MB last year. I degrag/ scan disk regularly, and have no viruses or spyware.

Here's the situation: Windows Explorer has become practically unbearable in recent weeks, hanging my computer with the infamous blue screen of death, sending out ''this program needs to shut down'' messages, and causing operations like dragging/ cutting and pasting of files between folders to slow down to a crawl.

Practically tearing my hair out, I started doing some online research and I think I may have seen someone mention that IE6 is unstable in Windows 98??? Is this, in fact, true? And what can I do about this? If I remove IE6, I will be knocked back down to IE 5.1, since that was the version I had before IE6, and IE 5.5 doesn't seem to be available anymore???

Discussion is locked

8 Posts
- Collapse + Expand Details
- Collapse -
Just wanted to also add...
by hfguide May 23, 2005 11:21AM PDT

... that another quirky thing that happens (which I assume is related to the problem above), is that the desktop icons (shortcuts) will do weird things, like suddenly change into another program's desktop icon, or all the 25+ icons will suddenly pop into the default desktop icon (you know, the one you see when the computer doesn't recognize what program the file belongs to), then cascade back into their original icon images.

I just don't get it.

- Collapse -
The 25 icon change is typical when resources run low.
by r. proffitt Former Forum moderator May 23, 2005 11:25AM PDT

There is no patch cure for that. Just run less things and read Optimizing Windows at http://aumha.org/articles.php . Why? The 64 KB memory pools in 98 are not expandable.

The other issue is your machine may have SPYWARE. What are you doing about that?

Bob

- Collapse -
It can't be due to low resources
by hfguide May 24, 2005 10:03AM PDT

1) Usually, when the computer is low on resources, the signs are recognizable: the icons in the top half of IE start to disappear and turn into numbers; I get an actual message that tells me that the computer is running low. I haven't been low on resources for a very long time, especially since I upgraded from 63MB to 255MB last year.

2) This problem with the icons happens randomly, regardless of how long the computer's been on-- sometimes at startup, sometimes after quite awhile.

3) I don't run any high end software on my PC-- the most high end thing I had was The Sims, and that's been uninstalled. Other than that, it's Netscape Composer, Internet Explorer, Outlook Express, Wordpad, or Tomb Raider I for me. That's it.

4) I don't have spyware. (I think I stated that in my original post.) The first thing I did was run Ad Aware to see whether that was the problem.

At any rate, thanks for the link. It had a lot of valuable, helpful information.

- Collapse -
Yet, the symptom, fix and your last post is ...
by r. proffitt Former Forum moderator May 24, 2005 10:06AM PDT

Exactly inline with what happens when 1 of the 3 resource pools runs low. It doesn't take any highend software. Even some firewalls (silently) eat such memory.

Too bad Microsoft never tackled it head on.

Bob

- Collapse -
This may help
by Blue_Zee May 23, 2005 5:23PM PDT

The icon issue:

http://aumha.org/downloads/iconca.zip
Having trouble with icon refresh and display? Maybe your icon cache is too small. This popular patch will expand it. HINT: It?s also been known to solve the common problem of slow Windows Explorer browsing. Edit the numbers to suit yourself ? the values in the patch will work for most people. (Original concept by MS-MVP Tom Koch. This expanded version provided by Andreas Kaestner.)

Unzip, righ-click and select merge.

Reboot and test.

Zee

- Collapse -
Thank you so much!!
by hfguide May 23, 2005 11:19PM PDT

I'll definitely download and try that!

- Collapse -
IE 6.0 is certainly compatible with Windows 98.
by Kees Bakker May 23, 2005 5:05PM PDT

There must be another cause.

Kees

- Collapse -
I.E. and Winexp are different puppies...
by reefurbb May 26, 2005 8:50PM PDT

I.E. is an internet browser, also used in Help and for HTML files on your PC. Windows Explorer is a windows browser, base of I.E.4, and does the rest of your W98SE opening, etc. Your problem is with Windows itself.
More RAM doesn't fix much. I find 64mb sufficient as long as malware or other stuff isn't eating it up.
start-run-msconfig, check items listed in "startup" tab. Uncheck stuff you probably don't need to start. It's also a place to see malware-spyware listed.
I use Norton Utilities 2002 (about $10...ebay) to fix all kinds of problems. Invaluable because windows-program-registry errors pile up. Scandisk does not fix much.

Back to Windows Legacy OS forum

CNET Forums

Operating Systems
Software
Electronics & Gadgets
Hardware
Tablets & Mobile Devices
General Help
Brand Forums
Roadshow Autos
Off Topic

Other Forums

Forum Info