explorer illegal operation shut down

[drexel5]

I am quite new to Limewire and had no problems with it for about a week. Now, after I shut it down I seem to get a message stating explorer has made an illegal operation and will be shut down. It doesn't quite shutdown, but removes half my icons from my sys tray and causes me to re-boot. I also noticed that when I disconnect and shut Limewire down that my firewall tells me it is still listening to 3 different ports. My web browsing seems a bit slower too. Can anyone shed any light on this matter, please?

My specs are:
win 98se, (fully updated)
1.8ghz processor
512mb ram
40gb hdd, (with plenty of space)
cable 1mb broadband connection (ntl)

I also have zone alarm basic firewall, Norton antivirus 2003 (systemworks edition), ad-aware se personal, spybot s+d, winpatrol. All are fully up to date and are ran regularly.

[fabion]

Hmmm could be that you have selected shutdown after tranfers or minimize to system tray.

In LW tool>options>shutdown ---- shutdown immediately --- select this option, if you want.

Not sure what is causing your IE to cause an illegal operation or to reboot. Could be a number of things.

I would suggest to do some routine maint., disk clean up, disk defragmentor also run scandisk to see if there are any problems on your hard drive.

[drexel5]

Sorry, might not have explained properly. It isn't IE that causes the error, it is windows explorer. At least that is what I think as IE is not loaded and it seems to try and shut down windows explorer. I have done a defrag recently (couple of days ago) but might try a disk cleanup and scandisk. My hard drive makes a whining noise now and again and my system resources seem pretty low when Limewire isn't even loaded, the best I can get is about 48% and that is when I boot up. Could these factors have anything to do with the problem? Thanks for your reply anyway, much appreciated. Might help a bit.

[RaaF]

Run scandisk and do a defrag.
If you know the make of your harddisk, go to the manufactors website to see if there is a checking utility.

Now windows 98 isn't exactly known for it's reliability, concider to swith to windows 2000 or even XP if you have the option.
It makes a world of a difference in reliability and a lot less strange errors like you have.

[drexel5]

Can't seem to run scandisk as something is writing to disk. I have shutdown antivirus and winpatrol and screensaver but not zonealarm as I need that to stop internet activity. I think there maybe a hidden program running in the background but ad-aware and spybot haven't picked it up. Zonealarm says common client cc app is listening to a port but that is symantec so I guess it's safe, do you know if it is necessary though?

I can get hold of a copy of windows me, do you think that would be better than 98se?

One other thing, when you said run scandisk, did you mean standard or thorough?
Thanks for your help.

[fabion]

I would run a thorough scandisk. This will catch any bad spots on your hard drive.

Also windows me would be better than 98.

Not sure about the rest of what you said, so I'll leave it at that.

[RaaF]

WinMe is better a little more robust than 98 but it still has the same foundation: dos, so it is still a watermellon balancing on a stick

Have you tried booting into safemode and do scandisk ?
Or boot with your win98 startup diskette and do scandisk ?
And as Fabion said, do a thorough scandisk so bad sectors are repaired.

The best way to stop internet activity is to unplug your modem so you won't need Zonealarm for that

[drexel5]

Thanks for that guys I will try those ideas, you must be really keen to keep people on Limewire. Keep up the good work!