eric1992 wrote:

I'm getting really frustrated. Each time I boot up Windows 98 the thing doesn't hesitate to bring a siege of "This program has encountered an illegal operation" messages that refer to Systray.exe, mmtask.exe, delhlp16 (or something like that) and I'm running out of options. I can't go on autorun.exe, open up control panel, or anything without it screaming errors at me. Tried pc restore from the windows 98 installation CD and scanreg restore. What else haven't I tried? I'm this close to just saying screw it and just reinstall the damn thing fresh.

Whoever decided that Windows 95/98 had to be so buggy should've been sacked immediately.

Before you try to re-install, you may want to run Memtest or some other hardware/diagnostic burn-in type program .
A visual inspection of the motherboard for leaky capacitors might be a good idea as well.
Discontinuing any overclocks or even temporarily underclocking (if possible) could help determine if the issue is hardware .

Malware/viruses might also be possible culprits .

There aren't any leaky caps, and I've tried diagnostic tools that come with Windows that I can think of.

Edit: I replaced the CMOS battery and it doesn't seem to give me those errors anymore... could that have been a problem?
Edit 2: Nope, still getting some errors. Should I just do a fresh install?
Edit 3: I think I fixed it! There was 512 MB of ram in the PC. I tried a limit on the msconfig of 256 and it worked perfectly, then bumped it to 384, no problems. Exactly WHY would having 512 mb of ram be a reason to have errors?!