AboutMichael Troy Expertise I have lots of answers for problems with defrag, clock time, performance, system resources, problems with passwords, opening files, etc. I also probably know of a freeware/shareware application for anything you want to do: sharing Internet, firewalls, games, utilities, graphics, audio, etc.
Experience I am the Director of Information Systems for a large law firm. I handle all sorts of hardware and software problems for over 300 users who use Windows 95/98. I also have a home network of six computers.
Question My normal boot (which I have not seen for a long time!)uses two splash screens and then direct to desktop. First screen is the Dell logo. Second screen is the Windows 98 logo. Next I should go directly to desktop.
However,
For a long time now, I go from the Win 98 logo to a blank screen with a blinking cursor in the upper right corner for about 15-30 seconds and then my desktop comes on. On rare days the blank screen just hangs there and I must crash the system and start over from scratch - then no problem.
I ran Dr. Watson and it came up with two items which it commented have changed the program files:
KB891711.EXE
KB918547.EXE
I know that I downloaded these from the now defunct Windows 98 support site on Microsoft's information that these files were to improve the security of my system. Could these be causing this boot issue? Would it be dangerous to remove them (they are on my Add Remove Program list available under control settings. I am not a computer expert and if I get myself into a jam by removing them it would be a disaster. Please advise as you would advise a novice. Do I make the change or leave all as it is and live with it?
Thanks for your valuable time,
Mark
Answer Hi Mark,
The two items are security updates. There should not be any problem removing them, other than leaving your OS slightly less secure. You could try that to see if it helps. Removing them should not be a problem.
You may also have other things running on startup that are slowing you down. You may want to try this free utility to identify programs that are running on startup unnecessarily:
Keep in mind that even if you use a program regularly (such as MS Office or Acrobat) you don't need to have the startup component run, it just means an extra second or two when you launch them manually.
