COMPUTER WILL NOT DO ANYTHING. MESSAGE SAYS COULD NOT RUN XMS HIMEM.SYS NOT LOADED. THEN I GET THIS WEIRD PROMPT WITH LETTERS AND NUMBERS. PLEASE HELP ME!!!!!! THIS IS AN OLD 386 WITH WIN 3.1

Run your recovery disk assuming you made one

Hello.... tap F8 right after you turn on your computer...... answer no to everything it asks you.... that should take you to DOS prompt without loading config.sys and/or autoexec.bat... go to your dos folder (since you didnt load yoru startup files mostlikely the computer'll not loook into those folders for commands you type), like cd dos, then type edit, that should take you to yoru DOS editor... press ALT to activate the menu options, go ALT then F the O to open file, tab to jump around blocks and select C drive, type in config.sys (I think) in the file to open part press enter should load that file, put REM before the line that says HIMEM.sys, go alt then press f and s to save, the exit... reboot your computer.... that should bypass the himem.sys part.... as a side note, if you have a DOS mouse driver and know which folder it is in, its best to go in and load that under DOS first, which will make the editing much easier if you have no idea how to use a keyboard to navigate around in dos editor... Hope taht fixes it.

You need himem.sys loaded by config.sys to load windows 3.1 Look for a backup copy of config.sys say .bak and rename it. then ctrl-alt del and f8 and see if himem loads. If not reinstall the memory cards

Ms. Hendricks, Please ignore response #2, as it is of no use to you. If you want to run Windows, you must have the himem.sys loaded. Response #3 is a good suggestion, and if it works, will save you a whole lot of grief. To do it, follow these steps (note-all the following commands will have quotation marks around them, but do not type the quotation marks when entering the commands. Also, enter all spaces between words as they are shown): 1. Start computer and watch for the message "Starting MS-DOS". As soon as you see it, press the F5 function key, which will bypass the autoexec.bat and config.sys files, and boot you into pure DOS. #2. type "ren config.sys config.aaa" and press Enter. This will save your existing config file as a new name (config.aaa) so that when you try to rename your backup file, you will not overwrite the original. #3. Most windows installations have numerous copies of config.sys, because almost every time you installed a new program or device, the software wrote a new one and saved the existing one under a different name (like we did above). To find these, type "dir /w" and press Enter. This will show the names of all the files in your root directory. You will most likely see a number of "config." names followed by different two and three character extensions. The best candidates will be config.old or config.000. Assuming there is a config.old, type "ren config.old config.sys" and press enter. Now reboot. If Windows now loads, you're home free! If not, post again or email me (note the -EraseThis- in my email address and do exactly that) and we'll take it from there. NOTE: if it does fail, repeat step #1 and type "ver" and press Enter. Record the version of DOS it reports--we will need to know that before proceeding further. Good luck!!!

hi .. I read your comments on the HIMEM.SYS ERROR I have a fairly need IMB computer and it went down completely I tried to reinstall everything and it didn't work.. The I got a new Disk from IMB and that didn't work.. I'm going to try what you said I hope it works Thank you .... Jessica Izzo

When i try to install Ram i get the Himem.sys error wt... is going on!!