Bindars Windows 95 & 98 Help Desk
Windows 98 Troubleshooter Problems
The Troubleshooter pages are blank or missing.
This happened after a couple of critical updates.
The February 2003 critical update from Microsoft
[Q810847]
disabled the HTML help functionality in Windows 98.
The fix was to re-install the tshoot.inf which is explained below.
Microsoft released a cumulative patch
[Q811630] that restored the HTML Help functionality.
To restore the tshoot.inf file:
- Make sure you have your system set to show all files. Go to Start > Settings > Folder Options and in the View tab, scroll down to the Files and Folders section. Place a check in "Show all Files".
- Open your Windows\INF folder and locate TSHOOT.INF.
- Right click the file and choose "Install".
That should restore the trouble shooters if the cause was the Q810847 patch.
If the trouble shooters still do not work, you have probably installed the November 2003 critical update [Q824145] that added a registry entry which disabled ActiveX controls in the TSHOOTER.OCX file. It is easy enough to delete the entry from the registry but that leaves your system open to attack. Instead I have created a small application which will run the Trouble Shooters by disabling the registry fix only while you have the Trouble Shooter open. As well, it uses it's own call to the file and that is not something that would be easy for an attacker to exploit. The file can be downloaded by clicking the download button. Please note that this fix is for Windows 98 and 98SE but probably also works on ME.
Visitors to this page since April 05, 2006