98SE EXPLORER Corrupt?

[JerryinHouston]

The good news just keeps comin'... My computer, running W98SE has developed what seems to be a corrupt exporer... I can get the machine to boot to the desktop and access to the HD's seems normal....BUT wheneve I try to use Explorer, write/read to a HD or to one of my 2 CDROM the blue screen of death appears and announces an exception and locks up. I reinstalled W98 on top of itself to try and recover the Explorer, but no joy. It happens if I click on the My Computer icon, Explorer icon, or try and use the floppy drive. The device manager shows all in well with the drives and their drivers. When I booted from the W98 evemergency disk with CDROM support it worded fine to reinstall W98 SE. Can someone help me out on this????

 

[Comtech]

What is the error? Cheers,
Jim
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[rtshort]

Sounds like a hardware problem but may be a virus??

 

[JerryinHouston]

Thanks for the advice, now an update. The error is a fatal exception at 0028:000000009 (I think that is the right number of zeros) and it stops everything forcing a reboot. I decided to reinstall W98SE over itself and a strange thing happened. Just after Win create the start file and moves on the Win Help the error happens again, during Win install....also, it than Bios comes on and asks for permission to write to the boot sector....OOPS now I know something is wrong, I havenever know Win to try and write to the boot sector like that.... I am mnow convinced that it is a virus. Most recent solution, a fresh install of W98SE on another newly formated HD...I have been looking for a reason to do this.... Anyway, I format the disk, use the W98SE emergency disk to get to the CDROM and proceed to make a clean install on the new HD......it happens again, same error and a request to write to the boot sector....which I denied. Should I reflash my bios (Award) to start over again? I have done this before so I know how to do it?

Jerry in Houston

 

[butchrecon]

IS your BIOS anti-virus support on? That could be causing your trouble. You need to disable the Anti-Virus in the BIOS. It is designed to protect the boot sectors from viruses.

 

[JerryinHouston]

Are you saying that I should disable the Bios Anti-Virus function? Is Win98 really trying to write to my boot sector and I should allow it? Thanks for taking the time to help....

Jerry

 

[Comtech]

Windows MUST write to the boot sector, or it won't function/load/boot...
Disable the virus thing in BIOS, it's basically useless if you have any other AV program on the computer anyhow, and it definitely won't let you install windows while it's active. Cheers,
Jim
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[rtshort]

Yes, allow it. Win98 is your boot sector. If you turn the virus protection off in the bios, it doesn't make any difference anyway. All it does is tell you when the boot sector has changed. When you install or reinstall Win98 it does overwrite your bootsector. I have never left that virus protection on in the bios. So many virus's come out every week that it can't do any good, since it can't be updated. Just tells ya when it has been changed.
Good luck and laters to ya

 

[JerryinHouston]

Thanks for clarifying...I will give it a try.

 

[JerryinHouston]

Thanks again... BTW, my BIOS tells me when someone is asking to write to the bootsector, not afterward....based on the msg and I have to say OK write, or deny that write. At least that is how it seems to work to me.

Jerry

 

[Comtech]

The windows setup will NOT always put up an onscreen prompt, thus the problems you're having.
Really, get rid of it! It's not worth the headaches, and then get a good AV program once you've got your system running again. Cheers,
Jim
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[rtshort]

That's correct you'll have to say OK to get windows to install, but as Comtech says, just turn it off.
Just say "NO" to BIOS AV