Whenever a disc is inserted into the computer DVD-ROM drive a blue screen appears saying ‘An exception 0E has occurred at 0028:00706100 in VxD scsi1hlp’. Because of this error I am unable to use any CD or DVD disc. A second problem occurs when loading Microsoft Office applications. It takes up to 10 minutes for the applications to load, and then another 5 minutes to load the actual document. This problem has only recently risen and I have never experienced this before. The computer is a Pentium III 500MHz running Windows 98 and Microsoft Office 2000.

Your first problem is quite a difficult issue, but there is an article on Microsoft Knowledge Base which deals with the same issue under certain circumstances in Windows Me. This article is available at support.microsoft.com/kb/250005. Even if your problem is not an exact match for the problem mentioned in the article, it would still be worthwhile to follow the procedure. Should this article not fix the problem, then another solution you can try is available at support.microsoft.com/kb/281252. I suggest that before attempting either of these procedures, you print the procedure so you have a hard copy. This way, if something goes wrong and your computer is unable to boot normally, you can boot into Safe Mode and you will know how to reverse the changes by reading through the printed procedures. In case you don’t know, to boot into Safe Mode, restart the computer and start tapping the F8 key when the ‘Starting Windows 98′ message appears (just after the power-on self-test has completed, but before the Windows splash screen appears). I would be interested to hear whether these solutions work, as some other users also appear to experience a similar problem.

Regarding the second problem of Microsoft Office applications loading slowly, if you are running a virus scanner (such as Norton Antivirus) which has the ability to scan Microsoft Office documents upon being opened then try temporarily disabling this functionality. Ensure you are not connected to the internet. For Norton Antivirus, open NAV and click ‘Options’. In the window that appears, in the left-hand pane, click ‘Miscellaneous’ and untick ‘Enable Office Plug-in’. Click OK. If the problem ceases, try updating Norton Antivirus (which I hope you do regularly anyway) to see if any program updates have been released to address this issue. If the problem cannot be fixed, then you may have to leave the option to scan Office documents disabled. But please let me know if you are in this situation and I will try to find a better solution. However, should the problem persist, try uninstalling and then reinstalling Microsoft Office, in case there were any corrupted files which needed to be replaced. If this doesn’t help, there could be some process running in the background which is causing Office to load slowly. Use CTRL-ALT-DEL and close all non-essential background applications/processes. You can usually close all processes except ‘explorer’ and ’systray’. Make sure you are disconnected from the internet when completing this procedure, as you will be shutting down any firewall or antivirus software you have running, thus exposing your computer to any online nasties. If the problem ceases, restart your computer (so that all the processes load themselves again) and close each one-by-one, testing for the problem each time, until you narrow down the problem process. However, should the problem continue, try booting your computer into Safe Mode (using the procedure given in my answer to your first question). See if the problem persists. If not, then the cause is possibly some device or hidden process running in the background causing the problem. On the other hand, if the problem continues then the diagnosis becomes even more difficult. In either case, if you reach this point, please contact me with the results of this test and I will try to assist further.