IE 5 freezing system

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I have been using IE5.5 with Windows 98 SE and microsoft Office 2000 since july of last year and since January 12th have been experiencing intermittent problems with my system totally freezing up in IE. No mouse or keyboard function – only remedy is the reset button. There is no apparent pattern to the seizing up, it happens in just about any web page (even happened in the windows update dialogue once). Have been scouring the lounge and other troubleshooting sites, have drastically cleaned up registry, temp files, cache, cookies etc.etc.etc. and nothing seems to help. Sunday I decided to uninstall IE5.5, reinstalled IE 5.01 and everything seemed fine until today when the same thing happened. In all my searching I read woody’s column (in december WOW) about the beta vgx.dll which has been installed on my machine by IE 5.5 and despite the uninstall it is still very prominently in the picture. My question now is, can I just remove and replace that file or do I need to try the uninstall again? (I still have the original version in my installation files for W2000) Heaven knows if this is even the culprit, but I’m getting desperate. Hope somebody out there has some ideas.

Gladys

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I have 5.5 & have a non beta version of the dll. I would think that you could use System File Checker to replace the dll. Mine is located in

C:Program FilesCommon FilesMicrosoft SharedVGXvgx.dll

& is 1.67MB & is version 5.00.3014.1003

SFC will back up the old version.

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Thanks for the info. Following your advice I’ve managed to rid myself of the beta version of that vgx.dll file but am still hanging so will have to keep looking for other solutions.

Gladys

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Your problem sounds like it might be a driver–since you end up with no mouse or keyboard. I don’t know the solution, only guesses:
1. Try seeing what’s running when it happens (Ctrl+Alt+Del box).
2. Run Dr. Watson & see if it gives you any info.
3. Run SFC & see if any of your system files are corrupt.
4. Reboot & restart in MS-DOS mode.

Type: smartdrv.exe
type: scanreg /fix /opt
where is pressing the enter key.

Let it rebuild the registry. See if that helps.

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Phil
Thanks for your suggestions. After much searching, tweaking, reinstalling, uninstalling, registry cleaning and rebuilding etc.etc.etc. it appears that the culprit was McAfee Vshield virus scan online. Why this all of a sudden started getting in the way is a mystery to me, but having checked the McAfee forum it appears that I’m not alone. I’ve managed to solve the problem by changing the settings to scan program files and documents only rather than scanning all files (which is the default).

Have been “freeze free” for a week now so hopefully this will remain the case (insert crossed fingers emoticon here when available) and McAfee will fix the problem so I can go back to “all files” protection.

Am posting this for the benefit of anyone else out there who may be having similar problems and hasn’t thought to try this…it’s rather an obscure problem and if you’ve been using a particular virus program for years like I have, it’s not the first place you think to look, is it?

Gladys

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No it isn’t, but you must have heard somewhere about McAfee? You could try changing your scanner for something half-way decent : InoculateIt does a thorough job and is free for personal use; Norton Anti-Virus is loved by those who’ve bought it…
Click to link…

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Thanks for the tip MerC, I did see the discussion of Inocculate IT and other AV software in the Software Finds forum and was thinking of trying it out. Having read that other thread again, I will definitely switch and add a few of the other freebies you mentioned in that thread as well. Guess I’ll be visiting your site soon for all that.

As for finding the problem in McAfee – can’t really remember how it came to pass, but my husband asked one day what my settings were and suggested changing them to see if that would help and it did. – wish I could say it was more scientifically deduced but what the hey, the bottom line is that the original problem is fixed and now I only need to ensure I’m well protected in other ways.

Gladys

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