Windows Hangs and all programs hang

Larry, I went to a client's home and he is running Win 98 Se with a DSL modem.
I can't shut down the computer without pressing the power button or it hangs at the Win98 shut down screen.
I can't run scandisk except on startup,because it hangs at the intialization screen as does defrag.
The only things that run our Outlook, Explorer 5.0, and Office and some other applications.
I loaded Norton Anti- virus and it loaded but hangs when doing a scan at the "boot" file scan.
I tried running Norton Utilities Disk Doctor from the CD but that hung at the inital screen.
I did a selective startup and bypassed his startup files, renamed the Autoexec. bat and Config.sys and still no luck.
Any idea, do you think it is a hard drive or software issue (tried to reinstall Windows 98SE but that hung also), do you think I need to reformat the drive and reload all his software.
At one time this machine was hooked up to a network.
Steve Taglianetti

1. RE: Windows Hangs and all programs hang
lbyard Jan-29-01 06:55 PM
In response to message 0

Try pulling everything out of the computer except video and disconnect all drives except the hard disk and floppy drive. Boot from a startup floppy (http://duxcw.com/digest/Fromshop/software/windows/startup/startup.htm). The “manual’ version of the startup floppy is better for this so a lot of stuff is not pushed into memory. Run it without CD-ROM support. Run scandisk from the startup floppy. Do a surface scan, saving scandisk changes on a floppy other than the startup floppy. Reseat the memory if you still have problems. Try another power supply. Is the CPU fan spinning? Troubleshoot IRQ conflicts. It’s probably a defective hard disk. I get part of what you get from your client, right? Ha! Larry

2. RE: Windows Hangs and all programs hang
stevetag Jan-29-01 07:01 PM
In response to message 1

Yes you do!, thanks Larry. Now how about this one, I have another Win 98 machine that the operator tells me caught a virus. When you start up windows it goes to "searching for winsvrc.exe" in a small search window.
I can't access any of the programs on the start menu without getting that same message and I can't shut the message down with the task window.
Any ideas?

3. RE: Windows Hangs and all programs hang
lbyard Jan-29-01 08:46 PM
In response to message 2

Yes, that is caused by the Navidad Virus, which is an E-Mail worm. See http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.navidad.html. Larry

4. RE: Windows Hangs and all programs hang
stevetag Jan-30-01 00:47 AM
In response to message 3

Now wait a minute Larry, how did you know that, this is like talking to Carnac. Don't tell me you have been in the business for a long time - I have talked to many in the business a long time - now what is it Larry, do you have some kind of teleprompter there that is hooked into all the vendors of software and hardware.
Seriously, Larry, how do you do this - and thank you - again.
Steve

5. RE: Windows Hangs and all programs hang
lbyard Jan-30-01 04:38 AM
In response to message 4

I am Carnac. No one you have talked to has been in this business as long as I have. Another envelope, please. Carnac

6. RE: Windows Hangs and all programs hang
diletante Jan-30-01 01:48 PM
In response to message 5

This sure beats reading email. Rob