[roback]

I have been having problems defragging my hard drive over the past few months. It either runs very slow or it ends up in an endless loop and doesn't complete. I was able to defrag in safe mode a few weeks ago. I am running on an older self built system that is fine for my needs. All I use it for is a visual basic database, office, winfax, and internet surfing/email. I used a third party defrag yesterday and it told me it couldn't run as I was missing some dll. Well it went from bad to worse. Now, when I boot up I get error messages saying that there isn't enough memory to open c:/system, not enough memory to run c:/programfiles/microsoftoffice/office/OSA.exe. When I clear the startup list to nothing selected, it boots fine and I can even access the internet as I am doing here, but the icons on the desktop are all oversized, and when I go to print a document I get a machine language error message. I have tried cleaning up my registry; running SFC, checking for viruses, etc. with no improvement. I tried reinstalling Office 97 and it said that i.e. was an older version that what I have installed and it would cause problems (I think there is a trick with this ... (kernel32???). Seems to me that there is a way to install Office 97 over Windows 98 and then update i.e. to the current version but I forgot how. I tried installing Office 2000 but it would not install it (can't remember the error message). I am lost and do not want to reformat my HD as I don't have everything backed up. It seems like a low level problem as I can launch documents (can't print). Can anyone help. Would Norton Utilities help???

 

[NiteHawk]

Boot into Safe Mode and run HJT. I'm assuming that you are online on a second computer. HJT is small enough to fit on a floppy so you can d/l it and then take it over to the problem pc.

Go to http://tomcoyote.org/hjt/ or http://lurkhere.com/~nicefiles and download HiJackThis. Use Winzip to unzip it, then install and run it.

NOTE: HiJackThis.exe file SHOULD be installed in it's own folder. Before downloading create a folder and name it HiJackThis then d/l HiJackThis to that folder. To run double-click the HiJackThis.exe file.

The reason for it's own folder is because HiJackThis will create not only log files, but a backup of whatever it removes so you can restore if necessary. If you d/l HiJackThis to your desktop and run it from there you will have log and backup files scattered all over your desktop.

To run, click the "Scan" button. When it's done the "Scan" button changes to "Save Log". Save the log file it creates (it should open in Notepad at that point). Copy and paste the results in your next post. Most of what it finds is harmless, so do not do anything yet. Someone will be glad to help you sort out any of the not so good items that may be in there.

IF you get an error saying msvbvm60.dll is missing,
Download and run the MS visual basic 6.0 runtime files