Illegal Operation horror

can anyone help?

[creative craig]

I am at my girlfriends house at the moment and they are having a few problems with their PC :(

When ever they open a folder, up pops an illegal operation error message, on the details tab it tells me:

Explorer caused an invalid page fault in
module MFC42.DLL at 016f:6c30bef3.

Once I click ok it then says:

An error has occured in Internet Explorer and will now close, if the problem continues please restart your PC.

The PC is running Windows 98 and using IE 5.5

Tried restarting but no joy.

I deleted temp internet files (200MB worth) tried to repair it but it wouldnt let me because of the illegal operation. Changed the security settings and restoring defaults, but no luck.

I found MFC42.DLL and their are four of them, didnt want to delete them or anything ;)

I even looked through the Microsoft knowledge base but couldnt find anything.

Before they shell out a load of cash on some one to come out and fix it, just thought some one might know the answer here :)

Craig

[mat]

Try here [techadvice.com]

[digitalghost]

From TechAdvice:

One solution to try is to run the SFC* utility and have it check the system files. Many times it might detect the wrong version and replace it for you with the correct one.

Another is to use Explorer and search for this file MFC42.dll. Most likely you will find one or more copies and any or all of them would be the wrong version. You will need to get a good copy of this file and overwrite the version that resides in the windows\system folder with the good copy. Since this file is a 'system' file you will get an 'access violation' error unless you do the copying while in Safe Mode. Hold the F8 key during boot and go into Safe Mode, then you will be allowed to copy a good copy of the MFC42.dll file to the c:\windows\system folder without the 'access violation' error.

*SFC - System File Checker (SFC) is a program that verifies the integrity of the Windows 98 system files.

[creative craig]

Thanks for that :)

Craig

[pixel_juice]

Be careful if using SFC. It has a default database of original operating system files which will often be modified in the day to day working of your computer. Often it will tell you a file has been modified/corrupted when in fact it just doesn't match the default database.

If I were you I would upgrade IE5.5 to v6 and this should replace the file in question without you having to copy and paste system files yourself. You also don't need to use safe mode AFAIK. You can download the latest version of the dll and then extract it to c:\windows\system using SFC.

Also, run a full scandisk before changing anything, as it is possible that it is a disk error that is causing you problems.

[creative craig]

I downloaded the dll to a floppy disk then extracted it using the SFC.. its working fine now :)

Craig