The last time I got deeply into OS code and operations was about 35 years ago. Been pretty much of a mainframe hacker (Dinosaur, y'know) and of course MS-DOS and Windows power user just by virtue of having a clue, even if outdated.
So over the past week I have spent at least 20 hours on the following problem.
I have Win98 on a Dell 350MHz Pentium. It came five years ago with McAfee VirusScan. For a long time McAfee told me that my contract had expired and it would co$t me to update. Meanwhile Dell seems to have cut a deal with McAfee and now Dell users can upgrade for free.
How do I know this? Well I started having trouble with McAfee, it was just unstable (I think I've ID'd the file that caused it, more about that later). So I went to the site looking for a solution and found out I could download a whole new update, which I did.
After updating, I restarted per instructions and the damn boot process hung. (I'll share the details on request, just send me an ezmail.)
To make a long story short, I have re-learned more that I ever wanted to know about the DOS boot up process (yes, DOS still lurks under Win9x, like Gollum), safe mode, bootlog, etc.
But finally, I discovered the answer, which many of you already know, having read this far. McAfee was trying to access the original OEM version and it just didn't match. Delete old folders et voila! all is well.
If you're like me, you never throw anything out, on the theory that it just might come in handy someday. I can't count the number of times I found just the thing in the toolshed that my Dad had stored just in case, and it saved the day!
Modern version: back it up, then delete.
