I am running Win98 and am having an unusual problem. When I start it up, it will get as far as showing the desktop (but no icons) and then freeze - as if it is trying to find something or run something. When I reboot (I must do a hard reboot with the reboot button) it will then start. I have run MSConfig and removed almost (some things MUST be run) everything to no avail. I have started without a cfg file and without an autoexec.
Can you boot into safe mode? (Turn the computer on, as soon as you hear the first beep hold down the F8 key (I think) and eventually a screen will pop up, tell it you want to boot into safe mode.) See if that will get you atleast into windows, from their we can troubleshoot.
I know I’ve seen this problem before, I just can’t remember how we fixed it. It’s probably a corrupt file somewhere.
Is the machine completely frozen… as in the mouse pointer will not move at all? If not, can you hear the hard drive thrashing when it hangs at the desktop?
The mouse will move, but everything else is frozen. No, the hard drive does not thrash (no sound and the hard drive light does not flicker.) You can’t even do a soft boot with the old ctrl-alt-del. You must hard boot.
to Msdos.sys. Then boot using the “logged” option. After a failed boot, boot to DOS and check C:/bootlog.txt (search for “fail”).
That should at least give you some idea where the problem is.
I’ve seen this before. For me, it was a corrupt sound driver. Reading the bootlog, the sound driver was the last thing it attempted to load, so I renamed the file and it booted up OK (though obviously without sound).
I then re-installed the sound and everything was fine.
I imagine it will be something similar for you; just follow the same procedure to fix.
I’ve got the same problem at home. Boots to Windows, then won’t display icons and freezes. Cold boot again, and it’ll usually work fine, at least until I have to turn it off. So normally I’ve got to boot twice just to get into my system…
Anyway, I’m gonna see if maybe there’s a corrupt driver laying around… Maybe we’ve got the same problem.
Well, oddly. adding BootMenu=1 to my MSDos.sys did nothing. I did not get a logged option.
HOWEVER, I DID find the problem (it seems.) While looking for bootlog.txt, I found RunOnce.txt. I renamed that, and it now seems to run! Hooray. Thanks for the help.
Here are a couple things to try to isolate the problem from two of the more likely suspects. Boot into safe mode and disable your sound card in the device manager. Reboot a few times to see if the problem still exists.
If the problem still exists, obtain the latest drivers for your video card, uninstall the current video card in the device manager, reboot and install the latest drivers for your video card.
If the problem goes away after the initial disabling of the sound card, try obtaining the latest drivers for your sound card, uninstalling the sound card in the device manager, and re-install the new drivers upon reboot.
A little more info on your hardware would help as well. What kind of video card do you have? Is it AGP or PCI? What sound card are you running? Do you have any other peripherals installed, either in PCI slots or integrated into the motherboard (i.e. modem, scsi card, etc).
Thanks for the great suggestions all. SFC did not report anything bad.
I had an epiphany last night after going to bed and realized that I am a dolt. Chaning the BootMenu=1 did me no good 'cause I changed it in the wrong version of msdos.sys.
The log showed that LoadFailed = ndis2sup.vxd. I am now trying to figure out what ndis2sup.vxd does. I will update the thread when I do.