Win 98 woes *sigh* (a bit long)

Factual Questions
1

I was trying to help out a friend with a problem, and have to admit that I may have botched things further. Please me gentle with me, as these days I’m pretty much a Mac OS X girl and haven’t played with Windows much in a long time.

Okay, to the problem. My friend was trying to install the driver for an HP 950 DeskJet on his PC. Everything was okay until he tried to reboot, at which point the PC just crashed - it refused to boot at all from the hard drive. After some hours spent with Microsoft support, some editing of the registry and sequestering of a few virtual device drivers with incorrect creation dates (all Sept. 2003) in a separate folder inside the IOSYS folder, he was able to get the PC to boot up more or less normally. The fix left him with new problems, however, in that Microsoft Office would no longer respond at all, and the desktop looked screwed up (i.e., window frames would fall off the edge of the screen, and there was a constant flickering of the screen, as though dark lines were running across).

At this point, not wanting to get on the phone with Microsoft again, he asked me to have a look. I asked about the virtual device drivers - did the Microsoft guy explain what they were, or why putting them inside another folder would make a difference? My friend had no idea (nor would he have thought to ask, in truth). Hmm, says I, if this was part of what you downloaded with the HP driver and it’s causing problems, why don’t we just get rid of it? So to see what would happen, I archived the files and tried to reboot.

Whereupon the PC decided to crap out again. I got it to boot once from a boot disk into safe mode, backed up key files. StuffIt Expander is not responding right for me to unarchive those virtual device drivers, I can’t do system restore in safe mode… So I rebooted again from disk, tried system restore, got an error message that a needed DLL was missing, and that to fix it I should run Windows setup. Tried to do that from the hard drive, got more error messages about missing DLLs (new file names, this time).

So I figured that if there were this many files missing or perhaps corrupted, maybe we should re-install Win 98 from CD (into the original directory). Windows setup cruises merrily along until the last step, when it is supposed to be configuring the system… then it hangs. I cannot get past this point. All the PC will do now is boot up into Windows setup (with the same hanging outcome each time), or start up with CD-ROM support, so that I can look around in the various directories from the DOS prompt but do precious little else.

When I looked into the new config.sys file that was created during my re-install attempts, I noticed that it had but a single line (referring to himem.sys, I think). Copying the config.sys file from my boot disk to the hard drive doesn’t change anything, though.

I’m out of ideas at the moment. So… if anyone has any suggestions about what I can try next to get myself out of this mess, I would be HUGELY appreciative. I’ll be back over at my friend’s tomorrow to try again. Thanks.

2

Dump Win98, it’s notoriously unstable. Go to 2000 or an unglitched XP, if possible.

3

Same (or similar) thing happened to me when I installed a cd-rw drive into a win98 machine last week… I’m guessing since your friend is a novice he hasn’t partitioned the HD; I had to format the smaller partition on mine and reinstall Windows from scratch. Is there anything on the HD he’s particularly keen on? I’d suggest formatting and starting over (although this should be a last resort in case QED and the Straight Dope Tech Support Team can’t come up with a simpler fix…)

4

This kind of answer is not helpful and we generally do not like here.

Besides, it is simply not true. I am using WIN98SE on both my computers and do not have any particular problems except the ocassional crash and I know it is the TV card causing it.

5

I see…so your opinion is valuable and mine is not. And who is “we”? Never mind, I don’t really give a shit.

6

The OP is asking a precise question: how to fix a problem. Opinions about whether other OS’s are better or not do not belong in this forum as you can see if you read the forum descriptions. If you have any doubts I suggest you email a moderator.

And, I am sorry I do not have any good advice for the OP.

7

You can try this, but you may lose some of your settings and will have to reinstall some software, like Office, but it beats a total reformat.

  1. Rename your Windows folder to something else, like Windows.bak or whatever.

  2. Boot from your boot diskette

  3. Run your Windows setup CD. It’s basically doing a fresh install, so hopefully won’t hang, unless the CD itself is damaged.

  4. If the install is successful, reboot into Command Prompt Only.

  5. Navigate using DOS commands to C:\windows\system and locate the two files user.dat and system.dat and rename them to something else, like with a .bak extension istead of .dat.

  6. Navigate to C:\windows.bak\system (or whatever you named your old windows folder) and copy the user.dat and system.dat files there to c:\windows\system.

  7. Reboot into windows.

  8. At this point you can use Windows Explorer to drag and drop your old C:\windows\desktop, …\favorites, and …\fonts.

Hopefully at this point you’ll have things more or less back the way they were with a running windows. If you’re not concerned about keeping settings, you can skip steps 4-6 (which would be recomended…the registry can get quite bloated and starting with a fresh one can give you a big performance boost). Good luck.

8

Before reinstalling, try restoring from backup copies of the system files.

user.da0 (that’s Zero), system.da0, system.1st

Boot into Dos.

C:>cd windows

/* Remove system, hidden and read only attributes /
C:>attrib -s -h -r system.

/* Rename the system.dat file to system.<anyextension> */
C:&gt;ren system.dat system.sun

/* Copy the backup system.da0 to the system.dat file */
C:&gt;copy system.da0 system.dat

/* Reset attributes */
C:&gt;attrib +s +h +r system.dat

Do the same for user.dat, i.e. remove attributes, copy user.da0 to user.dat, reset attributes.

Reboot. Chances are that your user.da0 and system.da0 backups are also corrupted (since you’ve tried rebooting). If this is the case, restore the original system.1st file from the root directory and copy it to the system.dat in the Windows directory. To do this:

Boot to DOS.

C:&gt;attrib -h -s -r system.1st

C:&gt;cd windows

C:&gt;attrib -s -h -r system.dat

C:&gt;cd …

C:&gt;copy system.1st c:\windows\system.dat

C:&gt;cd windows

C:&gt;attrib +s +h +r system.dat

This will essentially reset the registry to the state when Windows was first installed. You would have to reinstall most of your applications. Now try rebooting.

If this doesn’t work, proceed with Q.E.D.'s instructions. If that doesn’t work either, backup all your data and proceed to format and reinstall Windows.

9

First, let me apologize to Sunfish and the mods. I need to post a reply, but will abandon the thread immediately thereafter.

The OP stated lack of recent familiarity with Windows. Based on my experience with 98NT in my department and the fact that my IS department dumped the OS because of aforementioned instability, coupled with the seemingly large number of problems being encountered, my suggestion to change the OS seems fairly reasonable and on point. Sailor’s reply, on the other hand, attacks me personally and then offers an opinion on my opinion. How this is in keeping with the forum rules escapes me. It would seem that Sailor considers him/herself a Thread Cop of some sort, waiting to pounce upon someone he/she considers a Violator. Nuff said, me gone. I now return you to your regular thread programming.

10

There’s an easier way to restore a backup Registry in Windows 98:

Boot into a DOS prompt and type ‘SCANREG /RESTORE’ (without the quotes)
This will bring up a screen that will list the last five registries that were backed up during a successful boot. Pick a registry that pre-dates your problems and restore it. Then reboot normally.

11

IIRC you can run SFC (system file check) and it will check all your system files and you can restore any that have been corrupted but it may not work for drivers. You might want to give it a try.

12

"Boot into a DOS prompt and type ‘SCANREG /RESTORE’

That’s what I thought but they did reinstall W98 so that might make this unavailable?

13

Re: reinstalling Windows

Try running the Setup program from DOS only (it’s designed to do that. After it finishes, you might need to update DirectX.

14

Whilst I’d wish sailor and others would leave the mod-copping to the mods, the larger point is correct.

If someone asks about how to fix a problem with their '98 Ford Explorer, “get the '01” is not a helpful answer.

Further (and I’m not saying you did or would do this, but since I’m on the general subject I have to make the point), “Get a Chevy” would be a violation of our rules, because we’ve seen that movie too many times to be bothered to guess how it ends.

15

Well, you probably need to get 98 back up if possible just so he can save or export his data using his existing 98 applications that may or many not work correctly on NT or XP (many don’t). Forget about system restore at this point it would only screw things up worse.

FWIW it sounds like he may have a creeping data corruption issue so a hardware scan of the disk surface would be suggested as soon as the drive is back up.

Some suggestions to get windows to complete loading at the end of the re-install. Jams at the end of the install process are often IRQ conflict related or memory integrity related. Remove the cards when installing the 98 OS and then re-install the cards one by one after Windows is up. This will let the OS assign resources as needed and available.

Before re-installing the OS

1: Remove all ISA or PCI cards except for video (if it’s on a card)

2: Unplug all USB peripherals

3: Switch the memory modules around. If there is only one put it in a different memory slot. If you have some different memory modules of the same size and type substitute them for the onboard ones.

4: In the MB BIOS return all memory and system speed settings to “default”

Chances are better than even Windows will complete loading if you do this.

16

“Remove the cards when installing the 98 OS and then re-install the cards one by one after Windows is up”

Shutting down the system each time to install the cards of course.

17

Im sorry but I agree with Chefguy and think that the best solution is to abandon Win98. I have gave up bughunting in Win98 a long time ago and now its “When in Doubt - Format C:”. Sorry but I think that is the best advice there is. All these answers and time consumed trying to fix a POS OS like Win98 is pointless. All you will end up with is a one bug less but still buggy OS.

I dont agree with the OP’s analogy. Switching OS’s is a 1000X less expensive and the benefits are even recognized by the developer of Win98.

My apologies again.

18

Well, duh. Of course MS wants you to switch from 98 to a newer MS OS. This is how they make money.

Note that this is NOT the OPs machine. Maybe they don’t have the money to go out and buy a new OS. Suggesting a switch to a new OS is all well and good, but if you haven’t any suggestions for fixing the existing problem as well, you ought to just keep your opinion to yourself.

19

YourOldBuddy,

Did you read manhattan’s post in this thread? Going against a Moderator’s very specific instructions is not OK; Your apology at the end of your post notwithstanding. This forum is not for your opinions; here we deal with facts.

The next poster who suggests switching Operating Systems will risk losing his posting priviliges.

DrMatrix - GQ Moderator

20

I’ll second astro’s advice:

C:&gt;scandisk c: /surface

And, if you have to reinstall, remove peripherals and cards not necessary to get the system up.

Sorry, I forgot about C:&gt;scanreg /restore

Do that first, but note that scanreg /restore will only rename system.da0 and user.da0 to system.dat and user.dat respectively.

Assuming these (system.daX and user.daX) backup registry files are also corrupted, as a next step you would still have to manually copy system.1st to system.dat as outlined in my previous post.