Just to put you in the picture, I bought my PC a couple of years ago from a specialist company - I have used it for video editing. It is a PIII 600 512Mb RAM and some serious hard drives running Win 98 2nd edition. After editing one project, I was having problems playing the video out to tape, so I thought 'do a disk defrag - that will organise and tidy everything up so the video files should play out better!' Well it seemed logical to me at the time. Disk defrag hung at about 26%. I had no option but to turn off the power. And yes, the video files would not play out so I had to completely re-edit.I rang the Tech Support team from the vendor and they told me I needed to buy a CD from them and update the software version. This I did but it made little difference when playing out. I called back and I was told that I should have updated drivers in Device Manager. This I did but each transition at the end of the video started with a 'blink' - a flash of black which is totally unacceptable. Also, the PC would not power down on Shut Down, and more often than not, it would not boot up at all. I would have to try to boot, then leave for up to 2 hours before trying again.
I called the Tech Support again who advised that I would have to send them the machine and they would probably have to format the C drive and reload everything. And they would charge me £254. I'm not sure what that is in US dollars but to me it's a lot of money to pay someone to put right a system right, particularly after their advice has made the machine virtually useless.
Anyway, I have formatted the C drive (after following advice from some net pages), reinstalled Windows 98 and nearly all of my software.
My problem now is that the PC always asks if I want to start with CD ROM Support (DOS Window) and will not boot off the C drive. I have to insert my boot up disk at a specific point and then it fires up ok.
If I boot with the floppy in, I again am asked if I want to start with CD ROM Support, and it gets so far until I am presented witha DOS window and am presented with A:>.
What have I done wrong/not done, and how can I get the machine to boot up off the C drive, and without being prompted via a DOS window for CD ROM Support?

Many many thanks in anticipation

Dear Jem

I am a computer builder/programmer, i have windows 98 se also,
and sometimes i even have boot problems too, but a format most the time
can fix my problem, you need to first check your
bios ("Basic Input Output System") Start your computer and whell your
motherboard is doing a memory check you sould see a text printed on the
screen that says something like "Press del to enter Setup" or something
like that, if you don't just try delete or esc, sometimes you need to press the key meny times, the bios is a confusing system sometimes once
you get in the bios e-mail me what you got in options to press,
well in most cases your system can be configed to boot your cdrom or other devices frist before windows boot, i need more information to help you with the problem, basicly make sure you have no other cds in the drive, floppys or zipdisks "if you have a zip drive", So if non of
above helps or problem comtinues, i would say "BUY A NEW COMPUTER"
from DELL or SNAPSHORT, CORP. and
not from HP

DELL,
dell4me.com
1-800-953-5632
NOTE: JUST DON'T GET A SYSTEM WITH XP...

SNAPSHORT, CORP.,
Snapshort_18903@JUNO.COM
www.snapshort.has.it,
soon going to be www.snapshort.com
NOTE: SIMPLE COMPUTER BUILDERS LIKE WIN98 SE, LINUX, WIN2000 AND NO XPS

YOUR WELCOME,
President of Snapshort, Corp.,
Joel Greene

P.S. E-mail me back soon thank you,
Snapshort_18903@JUNO.COM,
And i love real estate investing

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(C)opyright 1999-2003 Snapshort, Corp.
Snapshort_18903@JUNO.COM
www.snapshort.has.it
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Jen,

The only problem I see is that you made the mistake of trusting Microsoft products (specifically Windows). Note, you are in an OS/2 forum, and I'm sure that all would agree with me that the simplest way to fix your problem would be a fresh install of Warp 4 or eComstation.

I say this a little tongue in cheek, since I'm not entirely sure what the situation is with video editing software on OS/2. I wish I could offer you a serious solution to your problem, but my experience with Windows has been that once it starts giving you trouble, it'll keep happening no matter how many fresh installs you go through. I have nothing to back this up, but I believe that Windows just can't handle either certain types or large numbers (more than 10) of installed applications. I haven't done any study on it, so my judgment may be flawed, but this does describe EVERY Windows system I've worked with. And it could very well be that it has to do with poor programming as opposed to anything in Windows itself.

Good luck!