By accident I ran the System File Checker (sfc.exe) and now find it loads every time I boot Windows 98. The file does not appear in the Start-up Folder nor in the Launching Key section of the Registry. The program itself offers no method of switching it off. While it can be cancelled when the SFC screen appears, it is highly frustrating to have to do this at every boot. Can you please explain how to get rid of the wretched file (I have tried deleting and renaming it but this just means that Windows continues to hunt for a file it cannot locate).

You can probably disable the System File Checker from loading at startup by opening a program called ‘msconfig’. Go to Start menu > Run, and in the box that appears type ‘msconfig’ (without the quotes). This should bring up the ‘System Configuration Utility’. Click the ‘Startup’ tab and from here you can control which applications load and don’t load at startup. NB: The System Configuration Utility is only an application that is included with Windows 98 and Windows 98 SE. I would be interested to know whether any readers have a similar problem when running Windows 95.