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General discussion

windows won't start up- explorer illegal operation

by kkatarina May 21, 2005 2:22PM PDT

i have windows 98. recently, it has been doing this: it takes several re-boots to get windows to load. box pops up saying explorer performed illegal operation, and when i click control/alt/delete, there is nothing in the program box. sometimes the program box will have MSGSRV32 and MPREXE not responding. it seems to be getting worse. what is wrong?

kkatarinaice@aol.com

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4 Posts
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Re: boot problems
by Kees Bakker May 21, 2005 8:07PM PDT

Katerina,

This could be a hardware problem, or possibly a virus.

The brute-force method:
- First an online check with panda and housecall (see http://reviews.cnet.com/5208-6121-0.html?forumID=45&threadID=105027&messageID=1202495&tag=).
- If that doesn't help format your hard disk and reinstall Windows 98.
- If that doesn't help either, it was hardware. Have your machine repaired or bring it to the recycling.

Maybe other people will have more specific advices.

Kees

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boot problems
by georgealejo May 21, 2005 8:25PM PDT

Katerina,
when did you first notice that this problem started? was it after a download of something? was something new installed into the computer? did you go to an unfamiliar website? knowing this would help to track down the problem. another thing you might consider is if your computer can handle the upgrade, to go to windows xp. the upgrade is cheaper than buying the full version unless you can get a copy from someone that is going to college. usually they give discounts to schools and stuff. in the short term, it's been a while since i last used 95/98 but what you might try is to click on the start button and then on "run"... once the window pops up type in "msconfig" (don't include the quotes). i don't think that you can do this if it is a windows 95 machine... and i think that you might be able to do it in 98... if so, once in msconfig then it should have a tab that says "start up", click on that and it should show you all of the things that are starting up at the beginning of when you boot up. be careful here because if you disable the wrong item then it might cause further problems. what you might want to do is if you are able to get into msconfig then just make a note of what is showing up and post it in here so we can look at it. we'll do our best to help solve your problems...
i hope that this will help you in some way...
wish you luck...

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boot problem edit
by georgealejo May 21, 2005 8:27PM PDT

sorry, just noticed that you had posted that you had windows 98... i also wanted to add that the post that i made has to do with if the problem is something having to do with software or a virus... if it is a hardware issue then you will more than likely either have to update any drivers for 98 or uninstall the offending hardware...

again, best of luck on that and hope to see your post soon...

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The try to find-it-approach ...
by Kees Bakker May 21, 2005 9:00PM PDT

as outlined by George already might take some time. Read through the clean-boot-troubleshooting articles I mentioned in http://reviews.cnet.com/5208-6618-0.html?forumID=6&threadID=42446&messageID=498169&tag= for a systematic approach.

A simple test is to see if you can boot in Safe Mode without problems (keep ctrl pressed or toggle f8 around the time the message 'Starting Windows 98 ...' appears).

Succes isn't guaranteed, but everything is better than reinstalling Windows.

Tell what you find for more help here.

Good luck,


Kees

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