Windows Explorer Has Performed An Illegal Operation

[Jeriatric]

hello techs

i'm an oldie but newbie to this forum. my friends computer (he asked me to help him out....he knows less about computers than i do) will not open explorer (or my computer, control panel, or any folder on the desktop). i get the same message; this program has performed an illegal operation.....

i can access all application folders. all else appears normal. windows starts up and closes down normally.

i can get into explorer and the different drives by going through the browse windows.

he was using internet explorer 6.0 occasionally but mostly netscape 7.2. he has now switched to firefox 1.0, believing one or both of those browsers contributed to his problem.

i ran spybot and adaware. they found some parasites and spyware (prrtect) and either quarantined them or deleted them.

i have check msconfig to see what was starting and it is clean except the usual, scan reg, system tray, tweakui, monitor files. i ran sfc and there were no corrupt files.

i did go on the internet and have his computer scanned for viruses by, trend micro and grc.

i then reloaded window 98se....twice, but with the same results as before.

i can get into explorer if i use safe mode. when in safe mode i can open all folders.

i was told by whirly wiry web; http://www.whirlywiryweb.com
[from a link from sandi' site; http://inetexplorer.mvps.org]
that i needed to clean out some items in regsvr32.exe because i probably had a spyware varient of surf+. i could not find the file regsvr32.exe

i did not send in a 'hijack this' log yet.

the system is running win98 se with 256 mb ram on a custom made 700 mhz computer with one 20 gb (c) and one 8 gb (d) hdd.

sorry for the length. any help would be greatly appreciated

[llbbl]

try reinstalling IE.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=1e1550cb-5e5d-48f5-b02b-20b602228de6&DisplayLang=en

You can download setup file on other computer and run it on his computer.

[Jeriatric]

hello tecknogeek

re-installed internet explorer 6.0 sp1, but it did not change the error message and i still can't get into any desktop folders or use windows explorer except in safe mode. is there a switch in the registry that turns windows explorer on or off?

[llbbl]

I'd reinstall windows rather than try to patch something is broke.. You could spend hours installing and searching for what is wrong with it. It could have been a number of things...

You could probably just copy all the important documents n crap over to the drive that doesn't have the windows install files on them. Don't copy program files dir ... You will have to reinstall the programs.

Make sure you fdisk it before you install a clean OS. Usually you can do this with a boot disk or most of the Full Version's OS's have it as an option before you install it. YOU DON"T WANT TO REPAIR OR REINSTALL .. a clean install is best

[Jeriatric]

thanks for all the help. i will visit my friend and his computer on thursday. i will post the results. i did find this; Windows 98 Annoyances By David A. Karp (O'Reilly)

....Explorer can crash for no apparent reason, and at any time. In most situations, if Explorer crashes or is terminated, it will be automatically restarted by Msgsrv32.exe (explained previously). However, if Explorer doesn't automatically restart--for example, following the "Abnormal Program Termination" error--you'll have to restart it manually. Since Explorer isn't running, pressing Ctrl-Esc or double-clicking on the desktop will launch the Task Manager (Taskman.exe). Select Run Application from the File menu, type explorer, and press Enter. This should restart Explorer, which will load the desktop and Taskbar. If it doesn't, press Ctrl-Alt-Del to display the Close Program box, and then click Shut Down.

[Jeriatric]

hello techs

thanks again for all the help. i began with the simplest fix first, typing 'explorer' in the run box. i got the same error message. i ran sfc again. no corrupt files. i still got the same error message. i ran scanreg /restore, but it only went back five previous starts that all occurred within the past week. i estimated that the problem started about three weeks ago from the dates of the spyware that spybot had picked up and deleted. i tried to do a complete reinstal of win98se again, but could not get the complete installation as it used newer 'existing' files during the instal. i ran hijack this again (v 1.97.7) from;
http://www.majorgeeks.com/
and printed the results out (v 1.98.2 is available now). i read their tutorial;
http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=38752
and using the list from;
http://castlecops.com/CLSID.html
i deleted some 13 occurances of malware and spyware from the list that spybot v 1.3 and adaware 6, as far as i could tell, did not detect (O2 & O3 listings). after a hard reboot, every thing is now working again. there are 3 listings on the hijack this print out that the castlecops list did not have. i am waiting for their update before deleting them. i am now a vocal fan of hijack this. my friend sent in a nice donation. my next step would have been to reformat his hard drive and start all over (he only had a few selected files backed up). many, many thanks to all.

[llbbl]

Hey that's a good guide . We need something like that on our site!

Glad you got it working using that program...