Been having issues with Explorer crashing and locking up on my system after getting some recent windows updates.

Also scandisk is finding more problems than it ought to, probably due to the system lockups that force me to reboot. Also if zclient from Zone Alarm is running, scandisk keeps re-starting.

I am running the unofficial win98 service pack 1.6.2 and it is acting like it did during the Win98 Shutdown problem. Could that patch have been "bumped" by recent updates. Should I re-install the unofficial service pack after the windows updates?

Any comments or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Explorer version is 4.72.3110 in C:\Windows while version 4.72.3612.1700 is backed up by SFC in Help Desk folder. Shell32.dll is 4.72.3812.600

Could you try to re-install the SP 1.6.2 ?

Don't forget to close all open programs before installing it, and when the SP asks for reboot, don't accept. You should manually reboot your system.

Gape,

I had tried re-installing 1.6.2 earlier at least twice. I always do a complete hard shutdown after installing major OS upgrades.

I am beginning to think there may be a problem with vsmon and zclient from Zone Alarm causing system instability. They both run as "services" and "killing" their processes has brought back my system on the last crash.

Any known conflicts with SP 1.6.2 that you know of??

I don't know any conflicts, but which version do you use of ZoneAlarm? Have you ever tried to reinstall ZoneAlarm?

Hi guys,

seems I'm having similar problems. I had to reinstall windows 98 after hanging up on a reguar basis during shutdown.

Experienced a lot of blue screens, scan disk after restart, loadqm and vsmon errors and finally windows98 gave up completely. I had zonealarm 55_062_004 installed.

After reinstallation of windows98 and deinstallation of zonealarm, my system was working ok but still has shutdown problems (as well as a problem with not playing DVD movies. Seems that DVD navigator got destroyed. Tried to restore mediamatics dvdexpress which didn't fix the problem). It seemed to me that Zonealarm was the major trouble maker.

However, I reinstalled zonealarm 55_062_000 again. The system worked but still had a hang up during shutdown. Then I updated to 55_062_004, and now I'm seeing scandisk after start up again.

Before I go through the hassle with troubleshooting using the Msconfig utility, I'd like to check, if somebody has a better idea.

Wulf

My system fails to shutdown about 50% of the time and I have 2.0b2 installed.
I am going to partition my 200 GB hd because it takes forever to scandisk it constantly.

I don't blame 2.0b2 though, I just thought this was a Win98 problem.

Anyone know how to debug this kind of problem?

This might be because zonealarm is writing to its log file when scandisk is running, which would cause scandisk to restart. Can you temporarily disable logging and see if that fixes it?

also doesen't windows 98 not support drives past 137GB?

Hey Wulf and the rest of the gang,

I seem to be over the hump on my shutdown and system busy problems. But I hate to say that I still have no idea of exactly what fixed the problem. I have probably spent 20 hours trying to find a solution.

I uninstalled 1.6.2, and Zonealarm and Spybot, did all my "Windoze" Updates, THEN I re-installed 1.6.2 and ZA & Spybot and shutoff ZoneAlarm & Norton email virus monitoring and killed the service run command for VSMON.EXE from Zone Alarm and all other uneccessary running services or processes in the Registry.

Whenever I need to run scandisk, I have to shutdown Zonealarm completely. Then I Scan and Defrag and then restart the PC. Zclient prevents Scandisk from running, that is for certain.

I believe that between the logging function of ZA continuously writing to disk and the recent Winblows updates from Micro$oft there is a conflict.

ZA changed their firewall to add email virus monitoring I don't want or need and M$ screwed up their update code, probably deliberately to FORCE people into XP. I also believe that ZA is running services that while they are compatible with XP, are NOT compatible with Win9X.

It is time to find another lightweight freeware firewall cuz ZA has lost my support!
There is no longer any "real" web based support for the freeware version, they edit the support forums to remove info on problems such as the ones I am having and they are getting into the M$ "Bloatware" mindset.

Micro$oft will lose my business just as soon as someone sells or provides a version of Linux that has an "id*** Proof" graphical user interface and installer routine. If it wasn't for the fact that I need to use their software for work, I would have blown them off long ago.

Alper, If you read this, when will 98 become "Public Domain"? When it does, I hope you can get your buddies to come up with mod's enough to show M$ that they missed the boat by "Orphaning" this OS.

Why does everyone think something is broken or needs "upgraded" when "Less is More".

Keep giving them Hell!

Just go on windows updates & install ie6
until maybe gape add-up all updates of ie6 in his pack or maybe ie 6 itself ,if ever?

i guess if you still going to use ie5 your problems may increase
also installing dx8.1 would be a good start if you don't need or wont dx9c


did you install all your drivers ,chipset , video etc..?

one more thing i always boot in to safe-mode to do scan (windows scan , defrag , anti-virus scan etc..) it goes better & faster

also instead of using scandisk use disk doctor from norton utilities,way better than scandisk and does a better job and doesen't have problems,also use 98lite if you can,install your apps after you've patched your os,i find apps install better than before if i do it that way