I have an almost 6 year old Dell Dimension XPS T running Windows 98se. It has an 800 MHZ Pentium III processor and 256 MB RAM. I have EZ ARMOR anti-virus and firewall installed (which uses Zone Alarm technology). Back in the middle of January, it finally decided it didn't want to boot up anymore, so I had a new hard drive installed and the original drive made into the D drive so I could still access data from it. It worked fine until about a week ago. Sometimes when the system boots, it doesn't load the yellow speaker icon in the SYSTRAY. If this happens, the system doesn't function properly and I have no sound. This can usually be remedied by re-booting (sometines twice). Now I've started getting error messages when I try to shut down. It's always the same "VSMON caused an invalid page fault in module <unknown>". Then it either locks up, necessitating using the reset button, or sometimes I can shut down by hitting CTRL-ALT-DEL. Sometimes get a blue screen saying " OD (or OE) caused a fatal exception error, etc. etc."
After using my computer yesterday, I went to turn it off and I got a pop up message saying "this program performed an illegal function" and locked up (So I don't know what program it was except it probably was the VSMON). I hit the RESET button and when the system booted up again, only the top half of the monitor showed anything. I then hit CTRL-ALT-DEL, hoping I could reboot. A pop-up again displayed and in it were two programs that it said were not responding - VSMON and MSGSRV32. I totally powered down, unplugged my cable modem and waited a while. Then I tried to power up again. It booted okay this time, but when I went to shut down again, there was a pop-up saying "MSIMN caused a stack fault in module KERNEL32.dll". I haven't knowingly made any changes to the registry and I haven't downloaded any online software or opened any e-mails from unknown sources. I'm not even sure what part of the registry to check or what to look for. AdAware didn't find any significant problems and a CW Shredder scan was negative. A virius scan of the WINDOWS folder didn't find anything. But now I can't run SpyBot anymore - that too causes system freezes.
I's like to know what's going on here. Thanks for any advice!
After using my computer yesterday, I went to turn it off and I got a pop up message saying "this program performed an illegal function" and locked up (So I don't know what program it was except it probably was the VSMON). I hit the RESET button and when the system booted up again, only the top half of the monitor showed anything. I then hit CTRL-ALT-DEL, hoping I could reboot. A pop-up again displayed and in it were two programs that it said were not responding - VSMON and MSGSRV32. I totally powered down, unplugged my cable modem and waited a while. Then I tried to power up again. It booted okay this time, but when I went to shut down again, there was a pop-up saying "MSIMN caused a stack fault in module KERNEL32.dll". I haven't knowingly made any changes to the registry and I haven't downloaded any online software or opened any e-mails from unknown sources. I'm not even sure what part of the registry to check or what to look for. AdAware didn't find any significant problems and a CW Shredder scan was negative. A virius scan of the WINDOWS folder didn't find anything. But now I can't run SpyBot anymore - that too causes system freezes.
I's like to know what's going on here. Thanks for any advice!
