96 probe will not stay in place when in park, will not reverse or drive

Is it parked or while driving. If driving go get the brakes looked at. If parked then my guess is it's a manual trany and the engine compression is not so good. First if parking down a hill put the car or truck in reverse and point the wheels towards the curb so when it rolls 10 inches it will stop when it hits the curb. And use the brake also. Again if it's not working get it repaired.

readjust the cable selector to put everything back in the proper place

Yes when you park on an incline you should always put your emergency brake on before shifting to park. Then whenyou are ready to move again put you car in gear before disengaging the emergency brake. this will remove the stress from the transmission.

Sounds like a part called a parking "Pawl" is hanging up. You could try to park the way they show you in driving school, with the rear of the tire against the curb when the car is facing uphill. Theory is that the tire will chock the vehicle against the curb as a bumper stop and prevent rolling backwards. This will minimize pressure on the inside of the transmission parking pawl.

You can go to aboutautomobile.com and search for "Consumer complaints" or Recalls and enter your vehicle info. Then see if others are having problems like yours.

There is a neutral safety switch to make sure car is neutral.If that switch went bad or becase your parked on incline the switch is not made up because car rolled back when you put it in park.If you can depending on the situation,put key in ignition,turn key till one click before it starts,apply emergency brake,depress regular brakes and shift car from park to drive then back to park.then turn off key and restart.If for some reason you try to shift out of park and it wont move you need to roll car a little forward or backward(have someone else do the pushing and be carefull not to put anyone in a pinch point between another car if this car is parked between two cars)With older cars this is usally the case.If this fixes your problem i would have a mechanic change switch because this will probrobly happen again.Be carefull.......

i'd say faulty gear position switch

Check the linkage, and cable brackets, there may be something loose not letting you put it all the way into park.

This is a tranmission linkage problem. The car may be in park but the linkage arm well sometimes slip of or sometimes just run crooked as you switch through the gears. My car has also done the same thing until I recapped the arm with a new lock washer

ask the car mechanic expert

This is normal, depending on the depth of the hill. This is frequent with standard/manual cars on uphills, they can roll back, but with automatic vehicles they usually have a small amount of throttle, (you'll notice this when putting your vehicle from park into drive with your foot off the break, it'll start slowly moving forward)
Now on the hill, if it's a steep incline your car will move backwards, it all depends on how high your throttle (the car itself) is, and the incline depth of the hill.