[WalterK103]

What aggravation....

Suddenly, my old machine has begun generating errors when I try to run various programs; the errors always occur in Kernel32.dll. I suspected spyware, so I tried running HijackThis...and for the first time in years of using HJT, got a page fault that it caused!

HIJACKTHIS caused an invalid page fault in module KERNEL32.DLL at 019f:bff7d39e.
Registers:
EAX=00000105 CS=019f EIP=bff7d39e EFLGS=00010202
EBX=81e4f262 SS=01a7 ESP=0071ee84 EBP=0071eea4
ECX=81e4e404 DS=01a7 ESI=00564d6b FS=2927
EDX=00000000 ES=01a7 EDI=00000110 GS=0000
Bytes at CS:EIP:
0f b7 3c 7b 33 db 8a da 83 e3 0f 03 fb 8b 59 1c
Stack dump:
81e4e404 000004e4 00524d34 000004e4 00502cec 00000000 00000046 00000000 0071eed8 bff7d0b0 81e4e404 00524eb4 00524f3e 00564cac 00000105 00000000

I think the problem began after I defragged the hard drives a few weeks ago. I rebooted after the defrag, and received a notice that the registry was damaged, and that I needed to run Scanreg to restore a working registry. I did, and then the kernel32 errors started. I have jumped through nearly every hoop I know of, and continue to get the crashes. I've restored various working registries, have checked my hard disks with the Western Digital Diagnostics, checked the physical RAM (both by software testing and by switching out RAM sticks), and the problems continue! I've run Spybot S & D, AVG antivirus, TrendMicro Housecall, Norton WinDoctor, Tune-Up Utilities Registry Cleaner, all with no luck.

I'm nearly at a loss as to what to try next. I suppose an over-the-top reinstall might work, but I don't know whether it's possible any more to get all the Windows Updates and patches for Win98SE. Any ideas would be appreciated!

[jwbirdsong]

If you believe the problem started after a defrag I would check out Check for a Corrupted Swap File and/or Corrupted Custom Profile in the article HERE (along with most others on that page...a couple refer to Office specifiaclly but most apply to Kernel32.dll in general.