Newt, does this make sense?

[Jim Roper]

Got a phone call early on boxing day.

"My computer won't start. It gets to the Windows 98 thing (Logo) and then switches off"

 

I told them to start it in safe mode and run sfc and would call back after the Boxing Day Meet.

 

Called back. "Can't find the replacement file that sfc asks for" ???????

 

Called round. The CDRom is not available in safe mode and the modem is not available either to update Norton AV. It's not been updated since September, even though auto update is selected.

Re-installed windows in normal mode from CD. Still the same problem. Tried again. No joy. About to re format the partition that carries the OS, but decide to run sfc in safe mode again. This time I select the 'ignore' option for the c10 files that it asks to be replaced.

Reboot, and all is well!

Download new virus defs and everything seems to be find.

 

What was wrong?

[Newt]

No modem in safe mode - fairly normal.

 

No CDRom in safe mode - usual for some systems (and I don't know enough to say why) but there is a work-around.

 

Do they have a regular 98 CD or one of those specialized things you get with some brands to effect a 'repair' if things go wrong?

 

If there is enough drive space, you can copy the main .cab files from the install CD to the hard drive since that's where SFC is getting replacement files.

 

As to the lack of CD support in safe mode - my suggestion is to have a boot floppy with CDrom support that does not load windows. Make sure the path statement contains c:, c:windows, c:windowssystem, c:windowssystem32. When it loads up, you will have the CD drive available. Then two choices for starting Windows from the command prompt are:

 

Win which will just start a normal session of windows

 

Win /D:M which will force a safe mode startup of Windows.

 

A couple other suggestions for a Win9x/ME system that is acting strange and that I would still recommend for your friend's system. All to be done from a DOS boot.

 

scanreg /fix

scanreg /opt

scandisk /autofix /nosave /surface

 

Couple of notes here.

 

Win95 did not ship with scanreg.exe but the one from 98 or ME works fine. No install needed but just a copy of the .exe on the PC. You do not want to use scanregw.exe in this situation (the GUI version) and never use the 98/ME version of it on 95. But the DOS version is fine.

 

In theory you can combine the /opt and /fix switches when you run scanreg. I don't since it seems to work better as a 2 part fix up.

 

The OS reinstall did not repair or replace the registry so it's probably in slightly worse shape now than before the reinstall. The main problem was that 9x/ME would remove entries when you uninstalled software but would never reclaim the space so you wind up with a badly chopped up registry file. After the precautionary /fix run of scanreg, the /opt will reclaim all the space and put the registry in the best order for smooth working of the PC.

 

[ 28. December 2003, 03:31 PM: Message edited by: Newt ]

[Jim Roper]

Got another call last night "It's happened again" so I'll give your suggestions a try later this morning.

This time the screen went blank while she was on the phone, normal after a period of screensaver, but will now not restart.

At one stage on Boxing day, I tried the startup one step at a time. It crashed after clicking to accept the mouse. She has got new mouse recently and I am wondering if it is something to do with the mouse movement event while in energy saving mode. We'll find out in the morning.