On Sat, 4 Aug 2007 12:10:03 -0400, "MEB" wrote:
"Robert Aldwinckle" wrote
| "genaugsberg" wrote

| IMO there is such a dearth of diagnostic tools for Win9x
| that likely you will only be able to resolve this by doing
| clean-boot troubleshooting. E.g. remove all unnecessary
| add-ons and other likely sources of interference to prove
| that IE6 is not the cause. Etc.

There are good tools from Nirsoft (www.nirsoft.net - not the domain
squatter on the .com equivalent). Most of them will let you
reversably disable items. The relevant ones would be codecs, BHOs,
ActiveX, Shell Extension Viewer, IE add-ons etc.

| When I'm using the Internet, all of a sudden I receive an error
| stating that the program has perfomed an invalid
....illegal...
| operation and will be shut down. When I close it, another
| window appears stating that IE will end and if I continue to
| have errors to restart my computer.

As in, shudown (not the reset button or vulcan salute!)

| EXPLORER caused an invalid page fault in
| module MSHTML.DLL at 017f:6363f7ad.

MSHTML.DLL is IE's HTML renderer, a richly-exploited surface that is
waved at any HTML that is passed to Windows, e.g.
- IE and web pages
- Windows Explorer's active desktop and "View As Web Page"
- .CHM help files
- .EML files, as "opened" by OE irrespective of current email app
- any email app that uses IE's engine to display "message text"
- OE, Outlook, many 3rd-party email apps

Explorer may use aspects generally associated with IE if segments of Active
Desktop, html viewing, thumbnails, or other aspects, are used within
Explorer, and vice versa [respectively].

True.

1. Was this party directed to check their settings for these activities?

Strong recommendations:
- ensure IE is at least SP2 of version 5.01 or 5.5
- disable active desktop
- disable View As Web Page

a. applications which might have been installed or removed just prior to
this occurring;
b. whether any registry modifications may have been manually or
automatically applied by some program prior to this activity.
c. whether tweakui or a similar program may be or have been installed
OR removed.

TweakUI's generally OK, YMMV with others. Also, suspect registry
cleaners, which may have chopped out stuff that wasn't as redundant as
the cleaner had assumed.

b. what *helpers* might have been or are being used by the browser.

IE 6, Tools, Advanced; UNcheck "allow 3rd-party enhancements"

Beyond that, the Nirsoft tools I mentioned earlier. Be careful, etc.;
for example, in Shell Extension Viewer, I'd restrain myself to
disabling only non-MS integrations.

I'd also do formal malware scans (e.g. DOS-based av scanners from
Sophos, F-Prot, NOD32 etc. from DOS mode boot) and Safe Mode scans
using Windows-based scanners for commercial malware, e.g. AdAware,
Spybot, A-Squared, AVG Antispyware, if these work in Win98, and being
careful to avoid the 200+ fake "antispyware" crud that's out there.

Then I'd install Spyware Blaster and apply that tool's passive
protection. I might also seriously consider Firefox, which at least
can be kept patched up to date (until they, too, drop support for OSs
that haven't been current for 5 years)



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