Everytime I try to open IE a message appears stating that IE has performed an illegal operation. When I close that message box another box appears with a message stating that I am restricted from from using the internet connection wizard contact the network administrator. I am running Win98 on my computer and it is not connected to any LAN. Please help.

Klow

The first thing that I would recommend is an update to IE 6. IE 4 is no longer supported, and is so riddled with bugs and security holes as to be a danger to yourself and others.

"But," you say "I can't get on the Internet to download it!" We've got that covered--the AOL 9.0 disk has IE 6 on it, since 9.0 requires it. Both versions (for Win98/ME and Win2K/XP) are found on the CD in the AOL9.0 directory as single executable files. I'm sure that you can dig up an AOL 9.0 disk somewhere... heh.

Be sure to download the patches, etc. as soon as possible from http://WindowsUpdate.Microsoft.com. Also scan for scumware.

Start by downloading Spybot - Search & Destroy via http://Security.Kolla.de and Ad-Aware 6.181 (or later) via http://www.LavaSoft.nu. Update both programs with the new reference files before doing a scan. It's not so much that you absolutely need both as it's a good cross-check; spyware authors are sneaky.