Help - Win98 going bonkers!

Question

Hi, About 2 - 3 weeks ago I noticed that things were getting whacky on my 5 yr old Dimension - XPS T500.  I have windows 98 first edition.  First things were highlighting and placing the cursor exactly where I wanted.  It is the original MS (large and slightly 'curved to the left' mouse, with wheel and rt. & lft. click buttons.   Formerly, left click and drag across text and release button, would highlight the selection.  Now when I release the left button the highlighted stuff 'un-highlights itself'.   As I write I have tried to place the cursor in a certain place such as between my first and second paragraph.  I tryied to put the cursor in front of 'Formerly' and the whole word highlights, then I tried again and the whole post highlghts.  It may take 5 -6 times to highlight something properly.   Also, highlighted areas can extend to one place (where I want), or the whole word, or the whole sentence or paragraph!  Then when I've finally got what I want, it unhighights when I realese the mouse button.   When I open an email it will open it and seem to click through it to part of the Outlook Exp. toolbar behind it and the printer box will pop open or hit the bar when closing, and rearrange the whole email box, requiring me to reset the displays to have the emails in order and newest on top instead of oldest on the top.   When I delete an email 2 - 3 emails delete (the ones right below the first one) and I have to go and retrieve them by going to deleted box and spend time higlighting the right one and moving it back to the inbox.  Whe I move an email to a diferent box sometimes it dissappears and is found 5 minutes later in some sub-email box that it wasn't intended to go to.   When going online, I click IExplorer and two browsers open instead of one.  If doing searches on a search engine, I'll hit the back button to go back to the results and it will take me back 2 or 3 pages of results or wherever I started from.   I have cleaned the mouse ball and roller pins, since I've had it, but this doesn't affect the behavior at all.  I thought maybe the spring in the button was getting worn out and not 'un-clicking fast enough'.   I have AVG AV and Tiny Firewall but this is new and operations were normal with this combom for a long time before the behavior began.  I have, in the past week, done Trend Housecall (complete security and AV scans) twice,  I've done Mcafee, Panda, Symantec and a couple of other online scanners and they report no virus or worms, or trojans.   BTW, yesterday and today, AVG caught and stripped two attachments of Blaster worm (with different suffixes) and put them in the Virus Vault where I deleted them immediately.  I don't think they caused any harm, as I neve knew about them until they had been caught and quarantined (and never opend them).  The above online scanners were used again last night beside AVG system scan and Ad Aware with newest defintions found nothing.   Today, Word keeps defaulting to a new size setting even after correcting it, and has given me warnings on two occassions that a Word Doc was corrupted (didn't recognize it) and I exited Word.   I am at a total loss as to what has brought on this new, and impossible to work with, condition to my formerly happy and cooperative Dell PC.   Please help me if you can?

rascule · Answer

I had similar problems with 98SE. It's aggravating as h. I think, but not sure, the problems started for me, after installing AVG. Tried everything I could think of, and everything I read, to no avail. Decided to format the hard drive and start over. The only problem with that, was I didn't have the Win 98SE disk. I bought the machine used from a computer shop. The cost of XP software and a memory upgrade from 128 Meg, just wasn't justifiable for me. I bought a new machine with XP. If you have backup software, It may be less expensive for you to format and start over with the same machine. Make sure you know what you're doing. Others on this forum can probable guide you through it. Or just go for it.....If it's broke, you can't hurt it.

Good luck,

rascule

cz · Answer

Thanks Rascule!

I don't think it has anything to do with AVG. I am more inclined tto think it's the mouse button return springs being worn out and not recovering from the "command mode" (snapping back) quickly enough and thus activating anything it passes over in that fraction of a second. I really have no idea but that?

rascule · Answer

I purchased a new optical mouse by Microsoft and installed its driver on the old computer. It didn't help me with this problem, but the twenty something bucks was not wasted, as I installed it on the new computer. I was able to repair the old machine several times with relentless persistence (I'm not an expert). When I got your problem, I was unable to repair it with weeks of relentless persistence. It got worserer an worserer instead of weller and weller. Kim Komando said Win 98 can get so clogged up with stuff, that you have to format the hard drive and start over. Save your files to disk first, of course. If you have no  98 software, you're in the same boat as I  was. A new machine with XP and more memory  was the only reasonable choice. Being of a frugal (not cheap) nature, abandoning the old computer was not what I wanted to do. One can re-use the monitor, speakers, keyboard, and mouse. I hope you can fix the problem. Try a new mouse with driver. Try search box at www.komando.com  Lots of helpful info on that site...Good luck...rascule.

cz · Answer

Thanks Rascule,

Kim Kommando is right. Dell Moderators have posted the same info about Win98 as well. I'm partial to KK though, as she did a product review on one of my websites in May, and WOW visitors are still coming in from her article (text link to my site). Not to mention all the scraper sites that republish her articles.

Everything was solved today. I took the darn mouse to a computer repair shop and they hooked it up and it made their PC go bonkers too! They hooked me up with a MS "corded" optical mouse for 19.95 and my PC is well again. Works like brand new! I guess I got lucky. Boy I'm a happy camper this afternoon. I will be doing a lot of house-cleaning this weekend and getting rid of junk I don't need anymore, deleting tons of old faxes and emails - IExpl favorites is a mile long so half of those will go. I save URL's and go back and wonder "what did I want this for"?

Thanks for hanging in there with me. Kudos!

Windows General

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