[lug] OT but desperate (win 98 won't boot)

[luke p]

I would suggest, if possible, to take that drive out of the computer, and 
place it in another win computer as a secondary (or slave) drive, use the 
drive that works to get the data you need, make your backups, etc.. then 
throw the drive back in its origional comp, format and install. should be 
the easiest way to wipe the mess on the drive, though your method of 
installing windows could be another problem.
I've sometimes had problems installing using the setup directly off the cd, 
what i would suggest is (if you don't already know, but you seem like you 
know what your doing, so sorry if it might seem watered down)
i always start with a clean drive, off of the cd boot to a dos prompt, make 
the dirs c:\windows\options\cabs
then copy off of the cd everything in the \win98\ directory into the \cabs\ 
directory and then go to the \cabs\ dir, run the setup from there, and that 
should work better.
Though just my 2 cents, but hope that helps.

-Luke






>From: Ben Luey <lueyb at jilau1.Colorado.EDU>
>Reply-To: lug at lug.boulder.co.us
>To: LUG at lug.boulder.co.us
>Subject: [lug] OT but desperate (win 98 won't boot)
>Date: Tue, 7 Jan 2003 18:54:36 -0700 (MST)
>
>This is totally off topic, but I'm desparte -- I destored a friend's
>windows '98 computer:
>
>Current problem: Computer hangs on startup (at the splash screen) I tried
>restoring old registery backups, but no luck. So since I had tried
>everything else, I decided to install a new copy windows 98 on the hard
>drive. Booted off the cd, told windows to install to a new directory. The
>install went fine.  Then it said rebooting windows 98 and then it crashes
>at the splash screen just as before. What could be wrong / how can I fix
>this without formating the hard drive and deleting everything.
>
>How this happened: All upgrades of IE5.0 caused the computer to hang right
>before showing the taskbar and loading the icons. I didn't know this and I
>installed the encryption patch for IE50. Rebooted and I got this problem
>of a hang with a blank screen (background color) but not icons or taskbar.
>So I rebooted again and the computer worked (but IE still didn't work for
>https) computer seemed fine and I turned on file sharing, restarted as
>instructed and got the same problem. Then I rebooted and the problem
>didn't fix itself, so I went in to safe mode and turned off file and
>printer sharing, but same problem. If I hit f8 at startup and did step by
>step confirmation, then the computer crashed when it started loading the
>registery settings (first thing it did). I then restored an old copy of
>the registery by running scanreg /restore from a safemode command prompt.
>The computer then crashed at the splash screen for win98 if I did normal
>mode -- safe mode still worked and reflected the changed registery. I went
>back to the original registery settings and it still got hung at the
>splash screen.
>
>There must be some corrupt file that even the fresh install of windows is
>using and causing the crash -- any ideas. My friends has all this data on
>the drive and a usb network card so no networking support in safe mode and
>no cd-burned and its a mess.
>
>Thank you very very much for any help / ideas / suggestions, hints on
>where to get help, etc, etc,
>
>Ben
>
>
>
>
>Ben Luey
>lueyb at jilau1.colorado.edu
>_______________________________________________
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