A little background info my gf's computer was having alot of probs so she gave me to fix it and now I think I'm deeper into the hole..anyway for some reason she had avg and mcafee both installed on the computer so they were conflicting and kept popping up 2 error messages which if you clicked ok would just restart the comp and it would o it again and it ws just a cycle..so I uninstalled both of them with the aim of re-installing another antivirus, which got rid of one error message, after uninstalling re-starting it kept giving me one error message something about a file missing in the registry and again when you clicked ok would restart te comp and the message would e back again so I went through the whole comp uninstalled all unnecesary programs like aol and other unnecesary programs, deleted any files that had anything to do with avg and mcafee and on restarting the computer now it goes in msdos mode tells me "cannot find a device file that may be needed to run windows or a windows application the windows registry or system.ini file refers to this device file, but the device no longer exists" it goes on to say try uninstaling the application using its uninstall program and then c:/progra~1\grisoft\avgfree~1\avg7core.vxd press any continue then the same message pops up this time with \avg7rs.vxd at the end then one more time with \avgtdi.vxdafter that windows appears to start up then a dialog box pops up saying "this program has performed an illegal peration and will be shut down if the program persists contact program vendor" and when you hit close thats it it shows a blank desktop no programs no nothing ctrl-alt-dlt gives me the option of just shutting down doesn't list any programs running on task manager...so how do I get out of this, and I have no start up disk nor a windows 98 disk.

It seems as if there are issues with your registry, as there are pieces still left from the other Virus Scanners, so what you need to do is install what is called a registry cleaner, it looks for old, unneeded, and invalid registry keys, and removes them and cleans it out, and with it, it can improve the performance of your PC too, here is a free one you can download I use on my computers:

http://www.eusing.com/free_registry_cleaner/registry_cleaner.htm

For a new Virus Scanner, I would recommend Avast Home Edition, it is free, and is one of the only anti virus apps out there that still support Windows 95/98, it is really good, I use it on my network and it is great

http://www.avast.com/eng/avast_4_home.html

Also, I would also recommend to run disk defragmenter as well, which is under system tools under accessories under the start menu

And....I'm a bit concerned that you are still running Windows 98. I completely understand not being able to get a new computer, no being able to afford, etc, but Id recommend, for security's sake, to use an alternative web browser, and use software like the antivirus i mentioned. If you are able to, I would recommmend upgrading this computer to Windows 2000, or Windows XP (if it is able to handle XP), these are much more secure platforms, and they are still within support by Microsoft, which they are able to still recieve automatic updates

I hope it works!