Unrelated Windows problem
 

My Win98 SE system has been having a problem lately -- whenever I try to kill a task in Task Manager, the system locks up. It's stable in everyday use, and if an application coughs and dies normally (i.e. pops up an error box and quits), that too is fine. The only time lockups occur is when a task is in the "Not Responding" status, at which point I select "End Task" and have to reboot.

This is largely a result of my attempting to get Morrowind to work properly. I had installed new VIA 4-in-1 drivers (successful) and Detonator video drivers (successful), and attempted to install new SB Live! Value drivers (crash, reboot). This largely solved the Morrowind problems, but caused the other, and I'm not sure where to start in fixing things or what specific files may be corrupted.

I know this isn't much of a suggestion, but have you considered upgrading to a newer version of Windows? Windows 98 always seems to have all these obscure, annoying problems, no matter what you do. But since I've upgraded to 2000, it just *works*.

How long have you had it installed?
If you have lots of programs going on and off there Win98 has a shelf life of about 3 months after which it become very wise to reinstall - things just start breaking.

I'm with juju - move to 2k unless you must use 98, in which case, work out how to back everything up quickly and reinstall every few months, the 9x kernels are just shit.

1) I had been preaching this concept (NT superiority) back in the early ninties when I bypassed Windows 3.1, and instead loaded Win NT. Back then, I encountered universal hostility for saying equivalent to what jaguar has posted. How ironic that suddenly, with XP being forced on everyone, most now are in agreement with what I had been saying so long ago. What changed? Is this proof again of a Star Trek movie theme - people fear change?

2) Task Manager cannot close a task. Problem was created before trying to close the task. Closing a bad process simply took out the OS as well. Problem is something in the process. Start by making a list of *.DLLs common to those programs.

One nasty problem with Windows 9x is that is wants to make *.DLL revisions transparent to the user / installer. It assumes the latest version is best. This may not always be true. But if some programs share the same *.DLL, then removing one program may not remove the offending *.DLL file.

Another problem I once encountered was a *.DLL instended for 32 bit OSes (NT based) was instead loaded by the program on a 16 bit (9x based) OS.

An ironclad solution is not provided. Provided is only a concept to discover the problem. Since Win 9x does not have powerful tools found in both NT and Unix type OSes, the task list and system logs, then Win 9x users have few tools to isolate or identify reason for crashes.