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Our PC is haunted! It has suddenly started switching itself on at strange times of the day and night. I have checked all the Power Management options, but the problem continues. The computer is running Windows Me.

When I open a program it does not display the program on the taskbar. This means once a program has been minimised the only way I can access the program is to use ALT-TAB. How can I get the programs to appear in the taskbar? The computer is running Windows 98.

About six months ago a Windows update was automatically installed and corrupted the Windows Registry. With the help of Microsoft the problem was fixed using a Startup Disk. When I asked should I download the update again, Microsoft advised the decision is up to me whether I want to risk it or not. Since this incident I have not downloaded any updates as I don’t want to risk going through this trouble again. Do you know what could have gone wrong? Also, when installing programs the installer often requests that I close any running programs. Does this mean I need to close programs such as Norton Internet Security as well? The computer is running Windows Me, with automatic updates configured to ask before downloading and installing.

When shutting down the computer following a long session, an error message appears: “A fatal exception 0E has occurred at 017F:BFF9DFFF. The current application will be terminated”. The message then says press any key to continue or press CTRL-ALT-DEL to restart the computer. However, these commands don’t always work and I often need to turn off the computer at the power point. The computer is running Windows 98.

I have been unable to install the last two released versions of ZoneAlarm on a fresh install of Windows 98 SE. During the installation, a message appears saying ‘Validation failed for C:WINDOWSTEMPVSINIT.DLL. You are probably missing a necessary root certificate’.