I need help swiching from my windows 3.1 interface to windows 98 interface. I had a problem in windows 98 when i had a invalid page fault when i booted to windows 98 so i couldnt get on the windows menu (I just get my wallpaper) I remember reading a message that i can switch to windows 3.1 to get to my files. I remember it said to edit some batch file in dos. But that has been 5 months ago and forgot what i did to get to windows 3.1. Any ideas

Maybe this should be at Win98/95 forum, but i'll try to answer. Have you replaced USER.exe with the one from Windows 3.11? If so you may need (I never tried myself) to edit "system.ini" located in the Windows folder and modify the line that reads "shell=explorer.exe" to "shell=progman.exe" and try to boot (in safe mode first, just to test). If nothing works, you can alway run setup again to reinstall Windows 98, but i'd try to extract USER.EXE, USER32.DLL, GDI.EXE, GDI32.DLL and EXPLORER.exe from a working W98 machine/Windows CD and replace them in your computer (putting them in C:\Windows\System, and the last one in c:\windows)

I find both posts more than a bit confusing - but sure, not much here to do with Win31 from Win98 unless you are much more proficient than you sound, and have both coexisting Likely referring to the Winfile.exe 'workaround' - may or may not be applicable, for best results post your real problem in the Win9x forum Computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and perhaps only weigh 1 1/2 tons. - Popular Mechanics, 1949

Hi Mikearc99 If I am reading you right, it seems that you have changed your Windows 98 machine to boot into the Win98 version of the Win3.1 Program Manager rather than booting into the standard Windows 98 Explorer. if so, the file you changed is C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM.INI Open it in an editor and find the following item (very near the top): Shell=PROGMAN.EXE if the "shell" item does actually point to "progman.exe" then that is what you did. Simply change that line (and ONLY that line) to read: Shell=Explorer.exe Save the file, reboot the machine, and you should boot normally into Windows 98 (except for whatever problem caused you to change it in the first place). Best of luck, Bruce PS Alexnrs: Is that what you were getting at as well? If so, I apologise. You can "shell" to PROGMAN or to COMMAND without any fuss other than changing the "shell" in system.ini, so I didn't understand the file copy routine you had described...

Although it's been a couple days, and maybe nobody's home anymore :).. I bet i can interpret the original post (luv puzzles..) You want to access the multiboot option, to get into w31 so you can access some files you can't get at through w98, because win 98 won't boot correctly, for whatever reason... Am i right, Mikearc99 ? if so , let me know..

roamer_1 Just changing the SHELL line in system.ini wouldn't cause such errors, so I think the core windows files (USER.EXE, USER32.DLL, GDI.exe GDI32.DLL, KERNEL32.DLL and so on) got either corrupted or replaced by older Windows 3.11 versions, in this case restoring them from the Windows cd should solve the problem... mikearc99 I can be more useful if you post your System.ini, Autoexec.bat and config.sys