Could someone PLEASE help me? I had to restart my computer the other day and it's been screwed up every since. Once I had restarted it, it asked me for my name and company (as if the computer had just been hooked up). I entered my name and whatnot and clicked ok. It continued to load windows and asked for my network password (as it always did). Once I entered it, it would continue as if it were loading windows, but would then display an error message..."This program has performed an illegal action and will be shut down.". Under the details tab it said, "Explorer caused an invalid page fault in module Explorer.exe at 0167:00401f31.". I have tried several times and it goes through the same process every time and won't load windows. I don't have a backup disk, only the original CD for Windows 98. I tried to get it to load up, but it's not recognizing my CD drive. The only operations I can perform are in DOS. But everything I have tried to do results in a message saying the program can't run in DOS or that the drive is invalid. I managed to find a backup for Windows 98 online that I downloaded to a disk, but it to says that it can't be run in DOS. I'm sure it obvious that I don't know that much when it comes to getting it fixed, other than what I have found online the last couple days, but I need to know what I can do. If anything. If ANYONE can offer some help I would really appreciate it. I don't want to have to be without my computer any longer than I have to be. Feel free to email me your ideas or any help you may be able to offer. My direct email addy is NashT8er@sbcglobal.net Thanks to everyone who may be able to help. I look forward to hearing ANY advice that you may have.

Go to www.bootdisk.com and download a file that will create a bootable floppy with cdrom support. That 'should' allow you to access the cdrom drive from dos and you can do a reinstall. Run 'setup' on the CD. You will be asked for the 'Product Key' for your CD.

You may want to try restoring a previous registry just in case the problem is there. Start up the computer. Before the OS starts to load, start tapping the F8 key. A menu should come up. Choose 'command prompt only'. Then at the dos prompt type scanreg/restore and enter. Choose a registry to restore with a date that precedes the problem.

I'm curious about what backup disk you found online. Perhaps you can post the website because the only backup I know is a full W98CD, unless it was machine specific. If it really comes to the crunch you can reload W98 with your CD (retaining your own stuff), but I wonder why this happened. The possibility of some malware or virus should not be precluded. In which case Windows reload might help inititally but you will still need to find out what nasty caused it. Derek.W