Strange 98SE Problem

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Elmo187

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 7, 2003
Messages
291
I've got a computer coming to me with a strange problem. This machine has had this exact problem before, the first time it came in, the person didn't want me to waste time troubleshooting it and to just format because it needed it anyways. I did a little troubleshooting, but couldn't find anything quickly so I didn't really look into it. Now the same thing has happened and I want to get to the root of the problem. Here is what happened.

One time on bootup before getting to the desktop it came up asking for their cd key, then once it got into windows you get an "Explorer has caused a fatal error" msg box and the machine will sit at a blank desktop..

Now, I searched the KB for the stop error(don't have it right now, will have the machine infront of me tomorrow), and nothing seemed to pertain to the problem.

What seems strange to me is that you get a screen asking for the product key.

Anyone encountered this before, or know what could cause this? If I can't solve this on my own, I'll post back with more details once I have the machine.

Just curious as to whether anyone else has seen this before.
 
Seems like a virus to me, i'd wipe the hard disk with autoclave and start over with a fresh install and all windows update patches :D

PS: dont forget to test memory with windows memory diagnostic tool or memtest

0ldmX
 
i see at least a few 98se machines a day at work (work in education and we have lots of older computers still around) and ive never seen your problem.

good luck and please report back if you figure it out.

^ a virus is a good idea. image a trojan horse that wants your cd key. im just speculating. :eek:
 
Its actually hard to imagine a trojan wanting a win98 key... To what purpose? Who wants to install win98? Who wants to install win98 and doesnt already have a key? Its easy to find a win98 key without resorting to a trojan... Hehe, isnt win98 a field replaceable unit?
 
98 has been done for a couple years now...no more support....
like I say, we dont fix it, we replace it.
 
Ok, so it turns out that removing a piece of spyware caused this. I think it was something ISearchTech related but I'm not entirely sure. I couldn't get into safe mode or regular bootup, so I restored the registry from an earlier date and all was good.

The stop error it gave was 0167:00501f31 I did some searching and it seems that others have had this problem but no one mentioned anything about the whole asking for a product key process. After I managed to get back into windows I did a virus scan and it came up clean.
 
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