I have used Corel 8 for several years with no problems. A few weeks ago both Draw and Photo Paint started crashing on launching or within a few seconds. A blue screen of death says:
"Windows
A fatal exception 0E has occurred at 0028:C0059C8D. The current application will be terminated"

More recently it has been referencing 0028:C0059D2D.

Occasionally a “This Program has performed an Illegal Operation” window has appeared instead with detail such as:
"MFINDEXER caused an exception 10H in module MFC42.DLL at 016f:5f41ceae.
Registers:
EAX=000127e5 CS=016f EIP=5f41ceae EFLGS=00010202
EBX=00000190 SS=0177 ESP=012ffe74 EBP=012ffe84
ECX=0000952c DS=0177 ESI=00000064 FS=29df
EDX=0000001d ES=0177 EDI=000000b5 GS=0000
Bytes at CS:EIP:
db 45 10 8b 45 20 6a 01 d8 c1 dd 18 58 dd d8 5f
Stack dump:
00413d08 012ffeb4 bff7b98d 00000001 012ffec4 5f41d455 000127e5 40fd0007 0000952c 40fd0015 40fd0002 40fd001d 012ffeb4 00413d08 5f41d187 012ffec0"

I have reinstalled my OS, Windows 98 SE, the entire Corel 8 suite (several times), done the usual Registry Clean and Seek and generally tidied up all round. CorelSCAN does not seem affected and all other apps seem fine too. Before things went pear-shaped, the only potential causes I can finger are running Scandisk in DOS and also allowing a friend to download her digital camera to my PC, the software for which I subsequently uninstalled.

My PC system runs with a 1300 MHz Athlon, 498 MB DDR RAM and an S3 Pro-SavageDDR graphics card.

Checking with Google against the “0028:” references shows many more questions than answers, mainly associated with games and browsers.

Any ideas as to the cause or (even better) a solution would be greatly appreciated. Please ask any questions you need. When it comes to this side of IT my rating is probably the novice side of competent.

Well, if you've already done an OS and application re-install and a Google search, then it sounds like you know what you're doing. I don't think that there's anyone on here that can actually translate those hex numbers so I would have put it into the Google search as well. But I shan't do that if I'll only be reading the same stuff that you've already found.

What I will do from my objective 'standing outside looking in' viewpoint is point out something that you might have not considered. Not definitely an answer but a valid suggestion all the same.

On the basis that fixing the new Illegal Operation might also resolve the new BSOD, then my attention is drawn to the MFC42.DLL file. This is one of the most widely used Windows shared system files - one of the core instruction libraries for a huge range of programs ....... such as the application that you installed on later removed for your friend's camera. When this was installed, it may well have installed a newer version of MFC42.DLL. When the app was removed, it's likely that it left the MFC42.DLL behind or tried to set it back to the previous version but, in one way or another, it may have become corrupted.

When you re-installed Windows 98, I am assuming that you did another install over the top of the existing one rather than fully formatting the hard disk and starting from scratch? If so, it may have found that the dodgy MFC42.DLL was a newer version than the one on the Windows 98 CD and, on that basis, would probably have left it alone and not installed a clean copy.

So how about putting a 'clean' version on from the Windows 98 CD. Note that some newer apps may be a bit upset by this but, if it messes up Corel Suite, then re-installing that again should sort it.

So here's what to do:

Go to Start Menu > Run.
Type sfc and click OK.

This starts the Windows 98 System File Checker. Tell it you want to extract a file from the disk. Point it to the Windows 98 CD-ROM and tell it to extract MFC42.DLL.

Reboot and let us know whether that helped

If that does work, I'll be REALLY pleased - never had to fix a Corel problem before, lol !

Thanks for that, DJ. I'll certainly give it a whirl and let you know the result.

Cheers

DJ:

Well you were right. I have 2 files called mfc42.dll (other than those use by my zip drive) on my hard drive. I checked the version numbers and they were different from each other (although the last modified dates were the same), while those on the Win98 CD are the identical as are those on a friend's PC. I SFC'd the CD file to overwrite the rogue file as you suggested. But, unfortunately, to date the same old BSD appears on opening Corel apps.

Anyway you obviously were on to something -could the Olympus Camedia have corrupted any other shared files do you think?

Thank you very much for taking an interest in my problem-ette!

Sorry for not coming back to you sooner. I read your message but couldn't think of a useful reply so I wanted to see if anyone else would respond.

The chances are that this program would have used a number of shared system files and could have potentially messed up any of them. Unfortunately, I have no way at all of knowing which files it would use.

My reaction to this problem, if it were my PC, would be to format the hard disk and start again with a clean Windows install and just the applications that I needed. But I do that all the time - don't know whether you're confident with formatting and starting from scratch.

The only other thing I can think of is to use a file-tracking utility such as FileMon. You could probably find a copy of this on www.download.com. Once you've had a few practices with it, you should be able to get the hang of running it on one side of the screen whilst you do your other stuff (e.g. starting up Corel) on the other side of the screen. FileMon will monitor all of the files that are being used. If you're REALLY lucky, you'll be able to see what it tried to use before the BSOD. But the chances are that you won't be able to read it quick enough

Sorry we couldn't be more help.