the computer is 98se and when i start it and it is loading windows at the screen with the windows logo and clouds, it stops and goes to an error message. it says that something in the I/O subsys file failed to load and that the file is either corrupt or the system is low on memory. i think that an important file might have been deleted when i was trying to get rid of some spyware and adware but im not sure. i've tried the scanreg/restore but it didnt change anything. i've also tried to start it in safemode but it wouldn't.if u think u might be able to help i can get the exact error message. thanks

Yes please get the exact wording of the error message.

As per Dave, yes, exact msg. IIRR there is a boot option to create a boot log. Try that and look through the log. You should see pairs of entries like: load ... started load ... success Somewhere in there you should see one load that started but did not succeed. M2 If at first you don't succeed, you're about average.

Possibly: An I/O subsystem driver failed to load? "This is a known problem in Windows 95. It has been fixed for Windows 98." Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.