Last time I ran AVG anti-virus scan on my Windows98 computer (in Safe Mode), it didn't complete -- I got a long white box with nothing in it. I've gotten those boxes before, but it usually has some kind of error message about shutting down the opened program. This one was blank except for a 'cancel' button...so I had to cancel the scan. I've had problems completing AVG and WinPfind scans because of error messages, usually the 'This program has performed an illegal operation...' message.

When I clicked Start so I could restart in normal mode, another white box appeared that said 'Error loading explorer.exe. You must reinstall Windows'. Had never seen that one before.

Are the 'white box' error message legit and do I really need to reinstall Windows?

There's no reply to this post, so I thought I would give some comments and pointers.

There are almost always steps to take rather than reinstalling windows. It depends how much time and frustration you are willing to deal with, and what you are willing to lose(reinstalling will get rid of all your personal stuff). The truth is, Windows 95, 98, ME just aren't as stable as Windows NT, 2000, and XP. Especially as far as booting and things crashing.

So...

Can you boot up at all, or does it freeze up completely? I assume you can boot in Safe Mode, so there are options there if you know what to look for to fix the problem.

I forget if Ctrl+Alt+Del in Windows 98 lets you see which programs are running and select one to shut down manually. If so, when you boot up and get that white box, try Ctrl+Alt+Del and shut down AVG(assuming that is what is giving the white box).

If you have System Restore turned on, you can try that. Restore to a point when it last booted up correctly if possible.

I use and like AVG, but if it seems like it is causing problems, you may want to get rid of it and use a different AV software.

If you can get to the internet, you might want to try one or more of the free online scans out there(pandasoftware.com, mcafee.com, etc). I think Windows has a fairly new free scan on the Microsoft site that scans for viruses and other pc problems. Not sure if it is for Win 98 though. Check into it.

Those are some ideas that come to mind right off. There are others. As I said, a lot depends on if you can get it to boot normally for internet access and such.

I'm a bit of a hardware junkie myself. So I would give you another potential fix before reinstalling windows. If you have two hard drives or two computers, it is possible to hook up your problem drive as a slave drive. You can then scan and try other fixes from the good drive. This is a handy wait to work on a drive that has boot problems.

Good luck. Hope you get it figured out.