Here is my sad unfortunate situation. I have a laptop which is a couple of years old, its a compaq presario 1275. And the thing keeps restarting itself, and when I get it to give a command prompt and enter windows, it says HIMEM.SYS is missing. Is there anyway that I can fix this myself? I have a desktop with windows 98, which is also on the laptop. And importantly, can I do this without erasing everything on my laptop?!
Any help is greatly appreciated.
Um … Have you tried copying HIMEM.SYS onto a floppy from your desktop computer and from there onto the laptop?
:rolleyes:
It may have the hidden attribute which can be removed and put back with the ATTRIB command. Enter ATTRIB /? for directions.
Based on yourd description there are many things which could be done but their probability of success is not normally worth the effort. The easiest and surest fix is simply to format the disk and re-install windows using a boot floppy and a copy of Win 98 or Win ME (I prefer ME for notebooks) or by using your Compaq recovery disk for the 1275 which will format and re-install the OS automatically.
If there is mission critical data on the notebook the more involved recovery methods that keep the data intact might have to be used.
now my floppy drive broke, crap, but thanks for the suggestions
I’d take rufus’s advice first. Do the following:
Make an emergency boot disk on your desktop. You can do by going: Start / Settings / Control Panel / Add and Remove Windows Components / Emergency Boot Disk
I may not have the exact sequence right since I don’t have a Win98 machine in front of me. But the diskette you make will have all the files necessary to boot up basic Windows, including himem.sys.
Use this diskette to boot up your laptop and copy himem.sys to your laptop’s C: root directory. Do this by typing (at the A:\ prompt):
copy a:himem.sys c:\
Over-write any existing copy. When you reboot the laptop (without the diskette), press F8 as soon as the hardware checks are complete (if you wait until it says “Starting Windows 98”, it’s too late and you’ll have to start over). You should get a text menu. One of the options will be “step by step confirmation”. Select this option and say “Yes” to each line, making note of any errors or problems. If you find any, let us know.
Well, this just ain’t yer day, is it?
He doesn’t have a floppy drive…
Search the HD for himem.sys & see where it is. Why do you need it on a two year old computer? You could use the serial ports/usb ports to make a network & copy a file from another computer.
Sounds like somethings gone very bad, or the config.sys was deleted, which I suppose is bad too…
try typing in “dir /s himem.sys” it should tell you where it is.
now on the root directory (C:) type the following:
move config.sys config.syx
copy con config.sys
DEVICE=put the path of himem.sys here i.e c:\himem.sys
now hold down the ctrl button and hit Z
press enter, then restart and see if you can get windows to start. If it doesn’t, you might as well
del config.sys
move config.sys config.syx
All of this was done by memory. I’m running XP
Why the heck don’t you just rip the HD out of the laptop and stick it in a 2.5"-to-3.5" adapter and make it your D or E or F drive on your desktop computer? Then you can copy the files off the unbootable drive.
Tell you what–if all else fails, send it to me UPS or FedEx, tracked, and I’ll pop it in my PowerBook and boot from expansion bay hard drive and burn you a CD or two or three containing the drive’s contents and ship it back to you.