Weird problem with messenger

Hey guys, i've recently encountered a weird problem with msn messenger 6.1 Everytime i sign in i can not send or recieve messages. There is a long pause and then it comes back with "MSN messenger needs to close sorry for the inconvience and then asks if i want to debug, send error report or don't send. I've clicked on all 3 and nothing has changed. I've ran all my virus programs, cleaned my computer of internet files and so on. The other thing it is doing is unless i close on the minimize box of msn it won't disappear off my screen, meaning if i click on my windows toolbox below to switch back to IE it will just stay on the screen. Anyways, i've got windows 98 second edition if that matters at all. Any help would be great, i've even tried repairing it and uninstalling it and then installing it. Starting to get to me cause my g/f lives in montreal and it really cuts down on the phone bills using msn but it won't work. Anyways, thanks again
jordan

 

Have you done scandisk, scanreg, defrag recently?

I have found those often cure the strange, 'one off' problems with 98.

When I ran 98 my preference was to do scandisk and scanreg when booted to DOS rather than using the windows versions. Seemed to work better.

Scandisk /surface /autofix /nosave
Scanreg /fix
Scanreg /opt (even though you can use both /fix and /opt in a single run, I really like to do them seperately)

Then from the GUI, scandisk again (to fix any long file name issues) and then defrag.

 

Thanks newt, but i'm a little weary of rebooting and running commands in msdos, whenever i've tried, i've also ******* up the comp and everything goes all hay wire!!! But i tried more thorough scans. TOnight i tried using my dobe acrobat reader and it come up with the box and the red "x" saying it could not perform this operation then i had to close. Anybody, any help.
thanks
jordan