missing shortcut at startup

everytime i startup 98se on my computer a window pops up telling me about some missing shortcut. how do i make it stop?!?!

This is sometimes due to an incomplete or sloppy uninstall of a program, leaving behind a reference to it in startup.

You can quickly check the c:\windows\start menu\programs\startup directory to see if the program that goes with the missing shortcut is there. If so, just delete the entry in startup.

Also, you can go into msconfig (Start>>Run>>msconfig), click the startup tab, and see if any entries checked there relate to the shortcut error message, if so, uncheck the entry, OK it, restart and see if your error goes away.

Beyond this, you get into editing the registry, and I don't know if you want to take a chance on hosing your OS for that.

Download Regedit from microsoft and clean your registry.
and check add and remove for the offending Software to remove it properly.

[quote]Originally posted by DANIMAL:
<strong>Download Regedit from microsoft and clean your registry.
and check add and remove for the offending Software to remove it properly.</strong><hr></blockquote>

I think DANIMAL means Regclean.exe...

Additional note: I noticed that you are running 98SE, Regclean was designed to work on 95, and was grand fathered into 98, but in my experience it isn't as safe on 98. I was forced to rebuild a 98 pc after a simple run of regclean dropped the system to its knees. I had heard from others that regclean was no longer in their tool belt, but didn't remove it from mine until this incident, and I haven’t used it since.

This is all that I found from Microsoft concerning incompatibility, although it had nothing to do with the problem that I had. It is just another reason why not to use regclean…
<a href="http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q299958" target="_blank">OFF: RegClean Finds Registry Errors After You Install Office (Q299958)</a>

And note this at the end of the article:

MORE INFORMATION
The RegClean utility is no longer supported and has been removed from all Microsoft download sites.

This is a common problem when a programme has been removed that was called from startup. The problem is yuo have to find all instances of the shortcut, and if you have your machine set for multiple users with profiles, you'll need to delete the shortcut from the user profile startup folder too, as well as the All Users profile folder.

Do a search for files folders named shortcut (or shortcu* or some other wild care combi) and delete any instances that are pointing to the missing programme. You should see the nam of tyhje programme displayed at start up on the popup screen. It normally says somethinh like "Windows cannot find the programme/file Whatever.exe, the nearest it can find in size and properties is somethingelse.exe. Do you want winodws to use this?"

Good luck

click start then run

type in msconfig


then click the startup tab

see if there is anything in there you can uncheck . if anything uncheck them all and see if you get the error still if not then add them back in one by one untill you hit the error.

I agree with all the above- that is a place to start, but if ti does not take care of it, there are a few viruses that can exhibit these symptoms... What file is it looking for?