I am a first-timer responder, but have been "lurking" for a few years.  I am not a technician, but have some mechanical aptitude.

I have a problem on my home computer, which I rebuilt about 2 years ago in evening classes at the local Vo-Tech; I am running Windows 98 on an ASUS P2B-B mobo with a Celeron 433 processor, 64 mgs RAM and a Western Digital HD.

Everytime I boot-up, the box "Windows Registry Checker" comes up on my desktop.  The narrative in the box states "Windows encountered an error accessing the system registry.  Windows will restart and repair the system registry for you."

I click OK and the system reboots.

Then MS Registry Checker starts and the following appears "You have restored a good registry.  Windows found an error in your system file and restored a recent backup of the file to fix the problem.  Press enter to restart."

The system reboots and seems to function normally, other than the fact than I am unable to obtain virus updates for Norton AV 2000.  Norton's message is my subscription has expired, which is not correct as I renewed in 12/01.

When shutting down, the following message appears "DDE Server Window.  This program is not responding.  It may be busy, waiting for a response from you, or it may have stopped running."  I click "End Task" and the system shuts down.

I reinstalled Windows 98, and the problem was resolved for one boot-up, now it is back to the same messages.

This problem happened literally overnight several weeks ago.  I do not get into the registry and play around.  What could be the problem, and how do I fix, short of formatting the hard drive?

Thanks for any and all help.

Jeff Long

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