Explorer Crashes At Start Up

This is a friends computer, and it was given to her by a friend who knows just enough about computers to mess them up. I have no idea what brand computer it is because there is no name on the tower. This is the info that I know:

Microsoft Windows 98 4.10.2222A
IE 55.50.4807.2300
AMD-K6 3D Proccessor
60MB Ram
81% system resources free
Windows-managed swap file on drive C:

The problem:

The computer starts up, windows loads, several icons load in the taskbar, then Explorer crashes with this message: Explorer caused an exception c0000006H in module KERNEL 32.DLL at 017f:6ff86eac. This also happens in Safe Mode. When I first started working on the problem, the mouse was not being detected. Now, it detects the mouse but the mouse is frozen. I have been able to open the control panel but the control panel folder freezes and stops responding before I can do anything. (I have to use the keyboard to access things due to the frozen mouse.) I was able to get to "Accessories/System Tools/Scan Disc" and it found numerous errors having to do with information located in invalid folders. The scan disc doesn't appear to have solved any of the problems. I even went to the "Help/Troubleshooting" section and even that gave me an error message similar to the one I get when Explorer crashes. This one says "HH caused an exception c0000006H in module KERNEL 32.DLL at 0167:bff86eac." This computer has been loaded up with so much stuff (webrebates, swimsuitnetwork, saie, tvm, etc. etc.) but I can't do anything to remove that stuff because Explorer keeps crashing. I even tried my Windows 2000 boot discs (floppys) and it's like they aren't even in the drive. (I did remember to change the boot sequence first.) Can anyone help me?

Angie

 

Hi,
Explorer.exe and Kernel32.dll are significant players in the running of Win 98. If I see those in an error message I might try reversing what I did to cause the error, but usually just do an over-the-top reinstall.

I would try a reinstall first.

Download and make a Win 98 boot disk from here:
www.bootdisk.com

Startup with that bootdisk. In the wording just above the A:\ prompt it will tell you the drive letter of the CD drive. Put the Win 98 CD in the drive then change drives to the CD drive, so if the CD is drive Z, type:
Z: [Enter]
type:
setup [Enter]

Go through the installation and install to the directory C:\Windows. This will rewrite the Windows system files and reinstall the drivers, but will leave the registry and third party software intact (even Windows updates will still be there). The system should be back in working order (we hope ).

If you find that when setup does a disk check at the start, if there are many errors and they are fixed, you may be able to Cancel out and Explorer will work again, otherwise go through the setup.

Have a look here, starting from reply #28:
http://www.windowsbbs.com/showthread.php?t=42090&page=2&highlight=explorer+reinstall
BillyBob describes doing the reinstall in reply #33.

Matt

 

I agree with mattman

At this time there is absolutely nothing to be lost by trying. Just make sure that the machine is booted to a floppy from a power off state so that nothing from the HD gets loaded.

BillyBob

 

Thank you both for your responses. I did finally get the Explorer to stop crashing and the mouse no longer freezes, but I'm still having problems with the "C:" and "Control Panel" folders freezing up. I made a Windows 98 boot disk on floppy, changed the boot senquence to floppy, but it appears the floppy doesn't work. Not sure if it's the drive or the disk. I created a Windows 98 bootable disk on CD from an ISO. Maybe that will work. I will post back the results. Thank you again.

Angie