I may have inadvertantly removed a shell file. now my computer woun't boot. I have to keep starting it over and over then if I'm lucky it will start in safe mode then evenually shut down before I can do anything with it. It was reading a some kind of gmkernal.??? (I can't remember the last 3 letters) Is there anywhere I can download a reboot diskette? I don't want to have to reformatt my hard drive.

Since you can get into safe mode momentarilly, try start, run, SFC...
It stands for System FIle Checker and it will let you extract any individual file from the 98 cd.
It will also scan for corrupt or altered files.

I tried to uninstall Win 98 last so it could reset itself but it is not in my add/remove programs (I am not sure why) also the system will not read the D: Drive in safe mode so I can't even reinstall the whole program.

get to www.bootdisk.com to get a bootdisk for ur operating system, it will give an option to start with cd rom support and then from there run setup by typing
A:\ (type d: to go to d:\)
d:\ ( type cd win98 then setup)to initialize the setup
run setup to reinstall windows in folder c:\windows, replace if prompted.