win98 hosed as explorer.exe loads

Hope I- can find some help here after days googling the web for answers and finding none that work.

Desktop won't boot after logon,even in safe mode.

Installed Verizon DSL on Win98 early version - which was working fine - it hosed Outlook 2k when I tried to upgrade to IE6.0 (shoulda had a warning). Following all instructions on MS support site for recovering, reinstalling office 2k, then reinstalling win98 2x, now gives "Explorer.exe - this program has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down.. "

Won't start in safe mode either. Only from win98 startup disk in a:. Was running latest norton a-v and internet security so don't think it is virus.
nothing follows shell=explore.exe in system.ini

400mhz Dell w/384 meg, 20gig HD and no problems prior.

Thanks in advance for some help.

richard hanes

 

Try this, boot with floppy, choose Cd rom support, type in these commands at the prompt:
c:
cd\windows
extract /y X:\win98\win98_41.cab explorer.exe X being CD drive letter
You should get the reply 1 file extracted.

You might be able to go into Safe Mode. Then go to Start\Run, type in Msconfig, disable items starting up except for Systray. If you then get in Normal, you know one of those items is causing the problem.