I can't get Windows 98SE to boot up; any ideas?

[paulv]

I have a Dell computer at home that is about 6 years old.  It has been running very well until yesterday.  I recently hooked up to Cable through Comcast to get the fastest internet connection available.  That has been working great, but it came with several pieces of free software to make life easier, yea right....

I downloaded McAfee Virus Protection and it was running well.
I downloaded McAfee Firewall Plus and it was running well.
Then, there was something else called McAfee Privacy (or something like that), so I downloaded that.  BAM!  My computer now no longer boots up.  I get to the Windows splash screen, and the startup sound plays, and then the window just freezes.  I can do a ctl-alt-delete at that point, and it looks like Explorer is running, and then there are only about 2 other processes running.  Both of them are McAfee related.

I tried to get the computer to boot in safe mode, and I can't even do that.

Does anyone have a suggestion?  I booted up using the original recovery CD and refreshed the operating system and that didn't help.

What steps would you go through to try to repair this thing?  There are several files on the computer that are VERY VERY important to me.  I made backups of some of them, but they are not updated as much as the could have been.

Thanks so much for any advice you may have to offer.

Paul

[2k_dummy]

Reboot to DOS - Command prompt only (hold down the ctrl key while booting to get the boot menu). Enter the command scanreg/restore and select a date prior to the date when the trouble started. Reboot to Windows and see if you can uninstall the problematic software.

[paulv]

OK, I will try again. So far, I can't get the boot menu to display. I have tried holding down CTL while booting and it just ignores it.  I have tried F8 while booting, and that doesn't work either.  The computer keeps going to SCANDISK immediately, instead of letting me have the boot menu.

But,  will definitely try again.  Thanks for the suggestion!

Paul

[GX1_Man]

Download and burn a Knoppix CD and save your files to a CD, across a network, to a thumb drive, etc.

www.knoppix.com

Then format the drive and reinstall Windows, etc. Make sure SP2 is loaded BEFORE connecting to the internet, and load on your antivirus, spyware and adware programs prior as well.

Obviously lose the McAffee!  

[paulv]

The end solution that I came up with that worked is as follows.  I finally got the computer to boot up to a dos prompt.  I went over and deleted the McAfee.Com directory and rebooted.  Walla. problem solved.....  But, I had already re-installed the operating system, so I still have work to do.

thanks for the recommendations!

Paul