Error Message on IE Launch (IE 5.0)

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Edited to add: running under Win98

Hi all,

I’ve been experiencing this for a while now but for some reason I didn’t post earlier.
The problem is: as soon as IE is launched, the prompt
[indent]

---

Iexplore
This program has performed an invalid operation and will be interrupted.
If the problem persists, contact the program provider

---

[/indent]appears. (Actually this is a quick translation into English, I know most of you will recognize the message by the first 3 words).
I think the message started appearing after I tried to fix some Office components from the Office 2000 CD: somehow that restored Outlook Expressed (which I had removed from nearly everywhere), restored OE shortcuts on the desktop and also on the Office Bar.
Shortly after that I noticed this problem. I think chances are real high the ‘Repair Office’ attempt triggered this annoyance, but can’t see how.

Does this sound familiar to any of you? Any suggestions? I thought of upgrading to IE 6, but the download ranges from 17 – 25 MB and being on a dial-up that doesn’t sound like an enticing choice…
TIA

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You can go to Control Panel/Add_Remove Programs/Microsoft Internet Explorer & choose Add/Remove. A dialog box comes up & 1 option is to repair. Another option is to run System File Checker & see if there are any corrupt files.
Hope this helps,

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You can go to Control Panel/Add_Remove Programs/Microsoft Internet Explorer & choose Add/Remove. A dialog box comes up & 1 option is to repair. Another option is to run System File Checker & see if there are any corrupt files.
Hope this helps,

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Diegel–

I second Phil’s good advice–Add/Remove and SFC are good sound quick first choices for repairing IE in 98. I was looking in the MSKB under IE 5.0 trying to find your error message to see what they had to say. This may not duplicate the set of circumstances that set up your error, with Office and OE problems as a prelude, but the error message is the same:

249191: Blank Desktop or Illegal Operations Error Message After You Install Internet Explorer

175930: Illegal Operations or Access Violations When Starting Windows

276393: Understanding and Troubleshooting Unrecoverable Errors (Faults) in Internet Explorer

When you read that error message and “The Shdocvw.dll file is missing or damaged.” can be one of the problems, that gives even more compelling ammo that running SFC may help you. Another thing you have at your disposal if you’re running Windows 98 or 98SE that often is a quick repair is to put “scanreg /restore” into the runbox, and restore an intact registry. It defaults to 5 copies of the registry at different points in time and can be tweaked to keep up to 100 in cabinet files. That can often fix a number of things like this.

There is also another interesting possible fixes in this KB, under Workaround. Also check to see that you have the latest service pack which might not contribute to the fix, but may pre-empt other problems, and I’d consider–and I imagine you have good reasons for not wanting to–updating your IE to IE6SP1.

SMBP

Ed. To Add–Thanks much for supplying the OS–with IE and OE or Office problems for that matter–it enhances your ability to try to find a fix.–SMBP

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Phil, SMBP:

Thanks for your responses. As soon as I can get hands to my PC I’ll make use of your suggestions. This might be on Saturday in fact. I just didn’t want to leave the thread without a reply after your dedication.

Thank you

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Phil, SMBP:

Thanks for your responses. As soon as I can get hands to my PC I’ll make use of your suggestions. This might be on Saturday in fact. I just didn’t want to leave the thread without a reply after your dedication.

Thank you

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Phil, SMBP:

It took me one more day to get back to you . I have tried your suggestions and come up with several questions:

a) I tried the add/remove fix but it didn’t work. I mean, it did recreate a couple of icons in the desktop and in the Quick Launch Toolbars but nothing else that I can notice. The problem persists. The only news is that the error prompt which used to be in the background now has a ‘window element’ sitting in the taskbar, just as when you open a Word document (if I make myself clear).

I searched for Shdocvw.dll in my C: drive. The one Explorer (and presumably IE) uses I have in (1) C:windowssystem — I checked with a program called Process Explorer which shows all the active applications and the .DLLs they use.
Now I also have two more Shdocvw.dll files in my C: drive (I guess they belong to Win2000 – I made a dual installation) which are identical one to the other but they differ in some KBs from the former (1). I made a backup copy of (1) so as to replace it but to do so from within Windows I need to shut down Explorer, which in turn would prevent me from viewing any folder, copying, moving, etc. I’m DOS-illiterate, how should I go about?

c) What is System File Checker? Never heard of it before.

d) Never heard of Run-> scanreg /restore either… If I got SMBP right, it will create a default 5 registry backup positions, and can create up to 100. That sounds good. Where are the .cab files stored? And once I get to one of the files, how do I restore a certain registry position? I fear I can mess things up… I’ve always been very careful when handling the registry so fortunately I’ve had no issues with it so far but this is news so I want to make sure I know what I’m doing.

e) Lastly, a weird fact: just after stating in my first post that:
[indent]

---

I thought of upgrading to IE 6, but the download ranges from 17 – 25 MB and being on a dial-up that doesn’t sound like an enticing choice…

---

[/indent]You guess what? I did download the IE6 setup file and then told it not to install but to download the installation files to my HD. So it did.
e.1) But things don’t end there as I can’t figure how to install it I have a folder plenty of .CABs, one .DAT, one .INI, one .TXT, one .DIR and lastly a setup.inf. I right click on this last one and select install, but nothing happens. I took a look at it with notepad and it points to one of the .CABs, BRANDING.CAB.
e.2) As long as one doesn’t choose to install while downloading the installation files, the IE6 setup file doesn’t provide an interface for the installation itself, so it’s not of much use.
e.3) There is a readme.doc file within one of the .CABs, but it doesn’t help much.
e.4) I’ve even tried extracting the files from each .CAB to a common folder and then running every .EXE or .INF, but nothing happened.

Has any of you ever gone thru something like this? I know this is a very long post which poses way too many questions but if anything I’d like you to concentrate on IE6 as I’ve already downloaded the 20 Megs and really wouldn’t mind doing away with IE5.

Thank you very much!

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I’m going to put up some links for you on SFC in 98 and repairs for IE soon–will take a little while.

SMBP

Reply | Quote

I’m going to put up some links for you on SFC in 98 and repairs for IE soon–will take a little while.

SMBP

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Diegol–

I’ll have links up for repair methods for IE more extensive than Add/Remove. Meanwhile, here’s :

185836: Description of the System File Checker Tool (Sfc.exe) in Windows 98

SMBP

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Hi SMBP,

Unfortunately there’s a missing DLL in my system that prevents me from launching the System Information tool… At this point I’m considering a Win98 reinstall, but I’d rather wait for the Summer (Winter in the US) to finally making it to XP.
Meanwhile I’m left with a bunch of CABs to extricate a seemingly easy but ultimately puzzling IE6 install

Thanks for your support!

Reply | Quote

I may not be able to sort out all those CAB files you got, but if one of the fixes I give you works, then you won’t need them. I meant to get them up sooner, but couldn’t. I don’t know how good that the version of SFC called the System Information Tool works in 98–I do know that it also could fix Office files–I’d have to hear from people that used it but it’s alwasy worthwhile trying. I’m going to pull some of the fixes from old posts if I can find them–and some web sites.

SMBP

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Some news: while checking some DLLs in C:windowssystem I noticed a file called SFC.exe. I tried run-> sfc and there it was, System File Checker came up. It restored only one seemingly damaged file, Extrac32.exe from C:windows. Things didn’t change.
I’m pretty sure I have the Shdocvw.dll file that will solve the problem. Thing is, I cannot replace it from within Windows as I stated in a previous post. How should I do it from DOS? I’ll make sure a backup of the original is saved just in case I mess things up.

Thanks!

Reply | Quote

Some news: while checking some DLLs in C:windowssystem I noticed a file called SFC.exe. I tried run-> sfc and there it was, System File Checker came up. It restored only one seemingly damaged file, Extrac32.exe from C:windows. Things didn’t change.
I’m pretty sure I have the Shdocvw.dll file that will solve the problem. Thing is, I cannot replace it from within Windows as I stated in a previous post. How should I do it from DOS? I’ll make sure a backup of the original is saved just in case I mess things up.

Thanks!

Reply | Quote

I may not be able to sort out all those CAB files you got, but if one of the fixes I give you works, then you won’t need them. I meant to get them up sooner, but couldn’t. I don’t know how good that the version of SFC called the System Information Tool works in 98–I do know that it also could fix Office files–I’d have to hear from people that used it but it’s alwasy worthwhile trying. I’m going to pull some of the fixes from old posts if I can find them–and some web sites.

SMBP

Reply | Quote

Hi SMBP,

Unfortunately there’s a missing DLL in my system that prevents me from launching the System Information tool… At this point I’m considering a Win98 reinstall, but I’d rather wait for the Summer (Winter in the US) to finally making it to XP.
Meanwhile I’m left with a bunch of CABs to extricate a seemingly easy but ultimately puzzling IE6 install

Thanks for your support!

Reply | Quote

Diegol–

I’ll have links up for repair methods for IE more extensive than Add/Remove. Meanwhile, here’s :

185836: Description of the System File Checker Tool (Sfc.exe) in Windows 98

SMBP

Reply | Quote

Phil, SMBP:

It took me one more day to get back to you . I have tried your suggestions and come up with several questions:

a) I tried the add/remove fix but it didn’t work. I mean, it did recreate a couple of icons in the desktop and in the Quick Launch Toolbars but nothing else that I can notice. The problem persists. The only news is that the error prompt which used to be in the background now has a ‘window element’ sitting in the taskbar, just as when you open a Word document (if I make myself clear).

I searched for Shdocvw.dll in my C: drive. The one Explorer (and presumably IE) uses I have in (1) C:windowssystem — I checked with a program called Process Explorer which shows all the active applications and the .DLLs they use.
Now I also have two more Shdocvw.dll files in my C: drive (I guess they belong to Win2000 – I made a dual installation) which are identical one to the other but they differ in some KBs from the former (1). I made a backup copy of (1) so as to replace it but to do so from within Windows I need to shut down Explorer, which in turn would prevent me from viewing any folder, copying, moving, etc. I’m DOS-illiterate, how should I go about?

c) What is System File Checker? Never heard of it before.

d) Never heard of Run-> scanreg /restore either… If I got SMBP right, it will create a default 5 registry backup positions, and can create up to 100. That sounds good. Where are the .cab files stored? And once I get to one of the files, how do I restore a certain registry position? I fear I can mess things up… I’ve always been very careful when handling the registry so fortunately I’ve had no issues with it so far but this is news so I want to make sure I know what I’m doing.

e) Lastly, a weird fact: just after stating in my first post that:
[indent]

---

I thought of upgrading to IE 6, but the download ranges from 17 – 25 MB and being on a dial-up that doesn’t sound like an enticing choice…

---

[/indent]You guess what? I did download the IE6 setup file and then told it not to install but to download the installation files to my HD. So it did.
e.1) But things don’t end there as I can’t figure how to install it I have a folder plenty of .CABs, one .DAT, one .INI, one .TXT, one .DIR and lastly a setup.inf. I right click on this last one and select install, but nothing happens. I took a look at it with notepad and it points to one of the .CABs, BRANDING.CAB.
e.2) As long as one doesn’t choose to install while downloading the installation files, the IE6 setup file doesn’t provide an interface for the installation itself, so it’s not of much use.
e.3) There is a readme.doc file within one of the .CABs, but it doesn’t help much.
e.4) I’ve even tried extracting the files from each .CAB to a common folder and then running every .EXE or .INF, but nothing happened.

Has any of you ever gone thru something like this? I know this is a very long post which poses way too many questions but if anything I’d like you to concentrate on IE6 as I’ve already downloaded the 20 Megs and really wouldn’t mind doing away with IE5.

Thank you very much!

Reply | Quote

Diegel–

I second Phil’s good advice–Add/Remove and SFC are good sound quick first choices for repairing IE in 98. I was looking in the MSKB under IE 5.0 trying to find your error message to see what they had to say. This may not duplicate the set of circumstances that set up your error, with Office and OE problems as a prelude, but the error message is the same:

249191: Blank Desktop or Illegal Operations Error Message After You Install Internet Explorer

175930: Illegal Operations or Access Violations When Starting Windows

276393: Understanding and Troubleshooting Unrecoverable Errors (Faults) in Internet Explorer

When you read that error message and “The Shdocvw.dll file is missing or damaged.” can be one of the problems, that gives even more compelling ammo that running SFC may help you. Another thing you have at your disposal if you’re running Windows 98 or 98SE that often is a quick repair is to put “scanreg /restore” into the runbox, and restore an intact registry. It defaults to 5 copies of the registry at different points in time and can be tweaked to keep up to 100 in cabinet files. That can often fix a number of things like this.

There is also another interesting possible fixes in this KB, under Workaround. Also check to see that you have the latest service pack which might not contribute to the fix, but may pre-empt other problems, and I’d consider–and I imagine you have good reasons for not wanting to–updating your IE to IE6SP1.

SMBP

Ed. To Add–Thanks much for supplying the OS–with IE and OE or Office problems for that matter–it enhances your ability to try to find a fix.–SMBP

Reply | Quote