I am trying to fix my mum+dads PC. They reckon the problems started soon after my nephew had been surfing the net. The PC locks up, and when you do ctrl-alt-delete, windows explorer (not internet explorer!) is not responding, so we have to reboot. Unfortunately, the PC locks up virtually everytime you try to do something. The only things I can actually get to work are MS word and Iphotoplus4. Most of the other icons on the desktop result in the pc locking up and "explorer not responding", including My Computer and internet explorer. So we cannot access the internet (PS they are on diallup) So far I have tried: Installing and running AVG, spybot, cwshredder, adaware and track eraser. The only thing that came up was trojanhorse dialler.10.ap. When it locks, and I do ctrl-alt-delete, there are no suspicous programs running although I've temporarily turned off findfast/osa/rnaapp/qttask. I've rebooted into dos mode and done "scanreg/restore" but there weren't any entries prior to the date of the problem. I've rebooted to dos and done "scanreg/fix", it chundered away for 10mins and said it was fixed. I've rebooted to safe mode and run SFC, but "no altered files found". This afternoon, I've discovered that we can access the internet via the AVG update icon, so I updated avg, spybot & adaware and reran them but found nothing. It seems strange to me that the "internet connection" window opens up when I "check for updates" in AVG but not when I click "internet explorer" in the desktop, does this give anyone a clue what our problem is? I am now at a loss at what to try next, any suggestions? I guess my last resort is to reformat the harddrive and reinstall win98? Many thanks for reading this far! Bartolli

Before you format, try an install 'on top'. You can always format if that doesn't work.

Try running your scans in safe mode. A lot of the malware hidesitself and others from these scans. Safe mode (press F8 as windows starts to load) prevents them from running.

try also uninstall/reinstalling repairing iexplorer, also check size of swap file space, may be fragmented,

Might be worth running this freebie Trojan finder too (if you are able to download/install): A2FREE - SEE DOWN PAGE Derek.W

Thanks very much for the all the suggestions guys, I'll try them this afternoon & let you know how I get on! Bartolli

OK chaps, just got back from ma+pa's, bit of an improvement, but still some probs. Tried the various suggestions as follows: Rimfire: I ran the various scans in safe mode but nothing showed up; DerekW: I downloaded a2 & installed + ran it onto my pc. I considered trying to copy it to a CD to install on ma+pa's pc, but decided not to because with a2 you have to dialup + register and they can't get internet so I didn't think it would work. Bofra: I tried to "repair" iexplorer but got the message back saying "couldn't repair". I then couldn't find an uninstall option for iexplorer (I'm only a bear of very little brain) so tried to reinstall iexplorer without uninstalling. Unfortunately, the CD I was using also needed internet access to install so couldn't do that either. Ham30: Tried to reinstall windows 98SE over the top of the old win only to discover that the CD I was intending to use wouldn't allow me to "update" the old win98. This is now the surprising (to me anyway)bit. After all this, just for the hell of it I 2clicked internetexplorer icon, and up popped the inet connection window and I got connected! Immediately on connection AVG squeals about my old friend SE.dll. I had this problem on my PC a few months ago, so I did what I did then: ie identifying the dll file in regedit, which in this case was gcpj.dll, rebooting to safe mode and deleting gcpj.dll and then rebooting. Now, almost everything works and the PC doesn't lockup anymore! I don't know why this has happened, obviously something happened when I did your suggestions, but hoorah & thanks! The problem now is that although I can access the internet and send emails, it can't actually display anything. Even when I type in known website addresses, I get server not found and can't display page messages. At this point I ran out of time and had to come home! I am guessing that I now have to try to tidy up the reg, and remove any traces of this se.dll thing. Any suggestions on how to do this as I am wary about deleting things from the reg. Many thanks for all the help so far Bartolli