The system: Compac 7940 runnning Win 98 SE, 256 MB RAM, 700 Mhz, 30 G HD, Creative Labs sound card, running Vcom System Suite 5. and Comcast DSL with Linksys Router

The problem: System will boot, Win 98 boot bar will run at the bottom of the screen, all is well until prompt asks for Microsoft Net Working password .. I've always just HIT the X in the top right corner to close the box or just hit OK w/o typing any password to bypass it completely. Now if I do that I GET TOLD that I've committed an illegal act and the system will now  shut down ... the error box tells me that I've caused an Explorer page fault and gives me almost the entire alphabet of fault code. But the strange thing is that even though the screen goes black and nothing happens , I can still hear the tone that 98 gives when it opens up the desktop ..... I've gone to ctrl/alt/delete just to see if Explorer or any other program is running and all I have is a blank box. I've tried booting in the safe mode and tried using the boot disk.... no joy ...... can you help me restore Explorer    thanxSame thing happens when you hit the escape key?

Are you free of spyware/adware/virii? That is always a good  place to start because you can't fix things if the system is not clean. Has anything been added or changed in the past few days, HARDWARE or software?

If you have data on there that you need you might slave this hard drive into a working machine to save it now. If it is totally buggered for whatever reason you may need to reinstall.  Do you have a Windows CD? If it won't boot to the Win98 boot disk or to the desktop, you don't have a good way to fix things, especially easily.  Is that the original Windows install on that machine?