Windows help needed

[melott]

I need some help with Windows 98SE.
This is my wife's machine (got to try to keep her happy)
On my PC, when it gets too messed up I just reformat and
reinstall. She has so much on her machine now that its
almost out of the question to wipe the drive and start
over.

SpyWare is taking over and also Explorer or Outlook or
something is tring to start on boot-up. I'm on dialup
and on boot-up the connection window open.
She is using Opera for the browser and Outlook Express
for mail. Opera is sometimes crashing now and sometimes
Outlook Express also. When connecting to the server it
appears to make the connection twice. When she in just
running some other prg. the connection window will
pop-up to connect to the net server and she gets error
messages popping up randomly saying Explorer has error.
 
There was a thread awhile back that mentioned a couple
prgs. that help get rid of the SpyWare but I couldn't
find it. I've tried 'CWShredder' and 'Cleaner' but they're
not doing the job.
I need to clean out the SpyWare and fix the Registry.
Any help here would be greatly appreciated.

[melott]

-------------
- And get XP on there... 98 is a pain in the...
-------------

I've stayed with 98SE because I don't see much difference
in the different versions.
My guess is I would have all the same problems with XP
as I'm having with 98.... so why change.

I'll get SpyBot and Reg? and try them.
Is there any other prgs. that might help???

[melott]

Another question here.......

Does all of these prgs. need to be in the register??
She has a screen full of icons and I think all of them
are being loaded on boot-up, It takes about 5 minutes
for everything to boot. The drive just keeps chattering
away for about 5 minutes ( all these prgs. loading??).
Many of these prgs. are only run seldomly. Can they
be taken out of the register and still be run from the
icon when she wants??

[melott]

@ -D-

Thanks .. some good info there........
I guess I'm going to have to learn to live with Win98 :-)
I've got her machine cleaned-up to where it runs fairly
well. The site you mentioned looks good.. have to browse
it for awhile.