I had this problem and never figured it out. I recently formatted and did a clean install of my Win98se and it's working again.
You can look through your registry for rtffile and change the program associated with .rtf file extension. It's not the proper fix for the situation but maybe a workaround.
For example I set windows to always open the .rtf extension with word pad through the "open with" applet
This is what my rtffile key looks like:
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\rtffile]
@="Rich Text Document"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\rtffile\DefaultIcon]
@="C:\\PROGRA~1\\ACCESS~1\\WORDPAD.EXE,1"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\rtffile\shell]
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\rtffile\shell\open]
@=""
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\rtffile\shell\open\command]
@="C:\\PROGRA~1\\ACCESS~1\\WORDPAD.EXE \"%1\""
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\rtffile\shell\print]
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\rtffile\shell\print\command]
@="C:\\Progra~1\\Access~1\\WORDPAD.EXE /p \"%1\""
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\rtffile\shell\printto]
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\rtffile\shell\printto\command]
@="C:\\Progra~1\\Access~1\\WORDPAD.EXE /pt \"%1\" \"%2\" \"%3\" \"%4\" "
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\rtffile\CLSID]
@="{73FDDC80-AEA9-101A-98A7-00AA00374959}"
You can look through your registry for rtffile and change the program associated with .rtf file extension. It's not the proper fix for the situation but maybe a workaround.
For example I set windows to always open the .rtf extension with word pad through the "open with" applet
This is what my rtffile key looks like:
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\rtffile]
@="Rich Text Document"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\rtffile\DefaultIcon]
@="C:\\PROGRA~1\\ACCESS~1\\WORDPAD.EXE,1"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\rtffile\shell]
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\rtffile\shell\open]
@=""
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\rtffile\shell\open\command]
@="C:\\PROGRA~1\\ACCESS~1\\WORDPAD.EXE \"%1\""
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\rtffile\shell\print]
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\rtffile\shell\print\command]
@="C:\\Progra~1\\Access~1\\WORDPAD.EXE /p \"%1\""
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\rtffile\shell\printto]
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\rtffile\shell\printto\command]
@="C:\\Progra~1\\Access~1\\WORDPAD.EXE /pt \"%1\" \"%2\" \"%3\" \"%4\" "
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\rtffile\CLSID]
@="{73FDDC80-AEA9-101A-98A7-00AA00374959}"