From: Rob on 02/13/2001
I am running Windows 98 (initial release) on a Gateway PII-266 with 64MB ram. My computer was working perfectly fine yesterday, but today when I try to boot up my computer, I get a message sayingExplorer
This program has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down.
If the problem persists, contact the program vendor.
EXPLORER caused an invalid page fault in
module KERNEL32.DLL at 0177:bffbff0f.
Registers:
EAX=00000000 CS=0177 EIP=bffbff0f EFLGS=00010202
EBX=00000007 SS=017f ESP=0059dd50 EBP=0059dd5c
ECX=00000007 DS=017f ESI=f1debbfd FS=41df
EDX=bffc9adc ES=017f EDI=0059df16 GS=1276
Bytes at CS:EIP:
f3 a6 8a 46 ff 33 c9 3a 47 ff 77 04 74 04 49 49
Stack dump:
0059df1e f1debbfc 00000000 0059dd90 bff97056 0059df16 f1debbfd 00000007 0059df1d 005903ba 0059df15 0059df16 00000001 00000000 bffc9adc 03807f5f
This message appears when I boot up, but the desktop and icons still appear. If I try to double-click on virtually any program, the same message appears again. Some programs do work, however, and I can't see any pattern between which ones do and which ones don't. Netscape and MS Word and Norton Utilities all crash when I try to run them, for example. IE crashed when I double-clicked on its icon, but when I right-clicked and selected "Open Home Page", it loaded, for some reason (which is very fortunate, or else I would not be able to ask for help on the internet). I did not install any new programs at any time recently and my computer was working perfectly well yesterday. I have no idea why this problem suddenly showed up. Can anyone offer any help?
I also have two somewhat unrelated questions. One, it seems that my computer has no system.da0 or user.da0 files in the windows directory. It was my understanding that these files are backups of the system.dat and user.dat files; my computer used to have them, but nowadays they don't seem to have any.
Also, this has been about the fifth or so time when my computer, for no apparent reason, would suddenly stop working due to a Windows OS crap-up. One day I'd be working along fine; the next day the computer would refuse to start up with error messages about corrupt drivers or registry failure or some such nonsense. In the past, I've had to reinstall Windows again to fix the problem; twice, even reinstalling on top of the existing system wouldn't help and I was forced to reformat and try again. I've tried reinstalling this latest time, to no avail. Does anyone know why my computer would have such a propensity to suddenly corrupt its operating system somehow? I've only had this computer for three years, and its OS has completely collapsed like this five times or so, and all in instances where I did not add any new programs or remove any new programs or make any particular change to the computer in any way. Could there be some failure inherent in the computer? (God knows I've had a number of hardware problems with this computer concerning its DVD drive an
