minor virus thing?

[Grey]

I have a black window saying "we apologize for the inconvenience but windows did not start successfully" message that keeps appearing on my PC. Windows 98 Hp PC. I had Avast running and could not get Malwarebytes or spybot to start. I have no way of knowing what was going on just before this happened. I make the mistake of letting my sister play on that machine. I do know she had Internet Explorer open, and was surfing. I've told her time and again to use firefox but she finds that "inconvenient". She also said "These things keep popping up on the screen and I just 'X' out of them, now nothing works".

Should I just shoot her?

[canetoad]

1. Yes, but only after waterboarding her first

Then boot into safe mode (reboot, keep tapping the F8 key as the computer comes back on)and one by one run a full Avast scan, Spybot and Malwarebytes. Reboot normally and see what happens.

In XP you can remove access to IE from the control panel but I don't believe you can do this in Win98. Why don't you delete all the shortcuts that point to it and hope your sister is too lazy to look in Program files?

[Grey]

4. Thank you!

I'll go try that. Fingers crossed....

OK, I tried that and the f8 key did not work. the thing keeps going around in circles. Will restart in 30 seconds, 'We apologize for the inconvenience but windows did not start successfully" message keeps appearing on my monitor. It gives me 5 starting options, Safe Mode, Safe Mode with networking, Safe Mode with Command prompt, Last known good configuration, and start windows normally.
You highlight any of these options and nothing happens. If you go to the start normally option it just goes through the normal start up and back to the black window with the same message.

Waterboarding is an option I will consider carefully. This woman has a desktop, a laptop and a netbook of her own so why come mess with my stuff?

[canetoad]

6. This may sound silly

But did you highlight the safe mode option then hit the enter key?

[Grey]

12. Yes, Thanks.

[CK_John]

7. Did you press enter after you highlighted an option like last known good

configuration. Your statement gave the impression you just highlighted and expected it to do something.

[Grey]

13. Yes, I did. nothing happened.

[CK_John]

2. MalwareBytes does not support Win 98.

Link: <http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php>.

This will be a problem, you will need to find older versions, here is a site: <http://www.oldversion.com/>. Look in security section (bottom left). I would get a copy Ccleaner version 130.xx and new copy of spybot(you will need to uninstall current one).

Boot using F8(tapping) select save mode if given a choice.

[Stinky The Clown]

3. Start in Safe Mode .... get it booted by whatever means ..... then shut it down and restart normally

Back in my Win 98 days, that often cured things.

If that doesn't work, you've lost nothing but a few minutes of time. You can then go further in trying to solve things. Booting to Safe Mode then shutting down and restarting is the "First Do No Harm" philosophy applied to your computer.

[Grey]

5. It won't start in any mode.

Can't "boot" anything. it just goes around in circles.
The F8 key isn't working either.

[CK_John]

8. Have you got a boot floppy to try?

[Grey]

9. When I got it I also got a "Good Luck With That"

from the people I got it from.
In other words, no. they gave me nothing, said I wouldn't need it.
One of those "If you need any help, just give us a call". Yah, Right.

Maybe I should just up-grade to windows 7?

[struggle4progress]

10. If the machine doesn't have anything on it you need, you can simply install another OS, of course --

but if you're going to do that, maybe you should consider a free Linux OS, instead of shelling out several C notes for Windows: you can download Ubuntu, or Linux Mint, for free; either might install more easily than Windows

Microsoft isn't supporting Windows 98 anymore

[CK_John]

11. Createing a boot floppy is a standard option in Win98. Here is a link

Link:
<http://www.computerhope.com/boot.htm#05>

Download a floppy link
<http://www.onecomputerguy.com/install/floppies.htm#boot_floppy>

Let us know when ready to try floppy

[Why Syzygy]

14. F8

Giving you those options is what F8 does. It did 'work'.

[Grey]

15. Thanks for your reply,

The options were there before I clicked on anything. The only keys that would work were the up, down, and side to side buttons.
After I got the enter button to work then the 'F' buttons would also work. My mouse also started to work.
I am grateful to all of you that helped me today.
I finally got my PC running but it sure is lame compared to how I had it set up.
There are some things I might try but then again I might just leave it like
this till my sister stops messing with it.
You people RocK!