PE caused Explorer & IE crash?

[Q Section]

Hello Everyone
We wish to tell this story that happened today in this sequence:
1)Started PE (demo (v1.620?) downloaded 21MAY) and got popup window 'Demo used more than 30 days or 50 times - please uninstall' - everything OK so far
2)Uninstalled from Start>Control Panel>Add/Remove Programs
3)Rebooted to take effect
4)Upon reboot Explorer crashed and popup said 'Explorer caused fault in unknown.........and will shutdown'
5)Clicked OK and Explorer started up again
6)This was continuously happening until we closed an application running which is a Quick Launch Bar replacement. Why we thought of that we are not sure.
7)The Explorer crashes stopped.
Finally got to try to go online with Internet Explorer and now IE was crashing
9)Got popup window similar to above for Explorer
10)Clicked OK and tried to restart IE but it kept on crashing continuously.
11)Shutdown and rebooted computer and had same scenario.
12)In BIOS changed startup to alternate HDD with another 98SE on it and restarted computer.
13)Of course everything on this alternate drive was OK and running well as we only have 98SE, NOD32 AV and Outpost FW on this HDD.
14)Using Explorer we verified there were no files left under Port Explorer folder in primary HDD.
15)We then downloaded new PE demo v1.680 into primary HDD.
16)Reset Bios to reboot to primary HDD.
17)Rebooted into primary HDD and kept the Quick Launch replacement off.
1Since Explorer worked when this QL replacement was off we were able use Explorer to go to the new PE demo and clicked to install it.
19)PE partially installed but popup window said 'Used over 30 days or 50 times.......' and v1.680 would not function (understandably).
20)Rebooted to have any changes take effect.
21)Upon reboot we restarted the QL replacement and got no Explorer crashes.
22)Tried IE and got no crashes.

All appears fully functional and working fine now. It seems the unistall of older PE was very problematic.

FYI

Thank you (DCS) for great programs and (Forum Moderators) for great assistance.

[Jooske]

Do i now understand you did not try PE at all, not before either or did you?
I use a registered version so i did never have those warnings.
If this was the first try it's certainly worth to ask support a solution for that!

The crashes i never heard about.
The QL feature is just a little QL from the systray icon to start/hide/stop nothing more, and never have seen any problems with that.
It disappears with uninstalling PE.

With uninstalling PE for the win9* series it's important to reboot and check if the dcsws2.dll was deleted or do it manually but it might be advisable for other windows versions too. I uninstall older versions via the uninstall in the PE directory itself.

Which was your QL replacement without PE installed at all?
And on which windows version did you have those experiences?

So you now have intalled a PE demo 1680 which you can't use because of the time and never used it before?

[Pilli]

Hi QSection, I also have not heard of this before, It sounds as though W98 had an uninstall problem with dcsws2.dll and by putting the later version on this has been corrected.

All appears fully functional and working fine now.

Like Jooske I am unsure what you mean by your last sentance

[Q Section]

Hello
We had previously tried PE and liked it. It was working fine for the demo time period. We usually did not use it too much even though it is a good and very useful tool. Sometime about 40 days after the original inatallation (yesterday was about 40 days after the orig install) we saw the notice for the new version (1.680). We thought we would try it so we deleted old version from add/remove. Then dl'd new version and we found we could not use it due to the fact our demo time expired even though this was a new version. We completely understand about that.
The rest of the story is that after the above post we turned off the computer for the rest of the day. The next day (today) we turned on the computer and guess what? Same problem but worse. End of story is we had to reinstall 98SE on top of existing 98SE.

Now everything (the whole computer) seems to be in order (including PE not working). The free demo period is for 30 days or 50 uses of any version. One cannot try each version for free each time a new version comes out. Hopefully we will get the budget request to add the whole DiamondCS suite with TDS4 and the rest.

Jooske - the mention of the QL thing was not a PE item; it was a separate program altogether.

[Pilli]

Thanks for the reply Q Section, Hopefully your "powers that be" will soon be able to meet your budgetary requirements.

[Jooske]

I am sure the PE developers are interested to know which QL software tool you are using as to find out if your problems might have to do with that program, hence my question about it.
As what you mention now with the necessary system reinstall and all that has most certainly nothing to do with PE.
Are you sure you are not infected with any trojan or virus?


Of course it's not possible to start 30 days again with each new release or 50 uses. I think that is a long time to love the program and not being able to use it to it's full potential.

[Jason_DiamondCS]

Hi QSection,
even if dcsws2.dll didn't get uninstalled then your system should still function fine. I would think that removing dcsws2.dll has caused a problem with some other LSP software you have installed.

Did you download something like AWPTA or some older firewall whilst PE was installed? If this problem ever occurs all you need to do is reinstall the conflicting software, a program called LSPFix will help you identify the conflicting program.

http://www.cexx.org/lspfix.zip

-Jason-