Jim writes:

<< I pulled the hard drive and connected it ot another machine, ran AVG and
it found 22 virus ...>>

If the machine's been that badly maintained, you'd be far better off to
reformat and install the OS again---preferably not ME. Win 98 SE would be
the best system for that machine.

It's probably accumulated a whole lot of other rubbish over time, and is
unlikely to ever perform properly unless you reformat. Depends, of course,
on what he wants to use it for.

It sounds like something is preventing Explorer from loading. You might try
running Task Manager (Alt/Ctrl/Del). Click File and see if there's a "Run"
or "New Task" option, and type Explorer.

Otherwise, you could try running sfc (System File Checker) or whatever ME's
equivalent is, or reinstall ME over the top.  But I'd guess that you're
likely to continue to have trouble, as it's unlikely that this machine has
been well maintained, and the registry is probably fairly well hosed.  From
all accounts, once ME goes south, there's little that can be done short of
drastic surgery.



Don Penlington
 From the Beach at Surfers Paradise in sunny Queensland.
Computer tutorials, local scenery,  and other things at my website:
http://users.tpg.com.au/deepend/index1.html