I have a presario 5150 using win 98 as the OS. Recently I wanted to clean up the HD and increase productivity. I ran defrag/scandisk and went to msconfig and removed several junk start up programs. Now when I turn on the pc it goes to a screen with start up options of safe mode, command prompt etc.. and when I try to start in safe mode I get an error message but only for a second before the PC turns off. I can't read the entire message before it shuts off but it says something about keyboard and msconfig error in line 1, windows must be reinstalled. I had planned on installing windows 2000 anyway but wanted to save some of the data. Now that I'm trying to load win 2000 the bios won't allow me to run from the disk first. I can't find an option to change the bios in the set up menu! Help what to do.. thanks

You can't remove junk programs with msconfig. All you can do is stop them from running at startup. Could you elaborate on how you tried to remove these programs and if possible, which ones?

I followed a link http://netsquirrel.com/msconfig/ to uncheck all of the unecessary programs from starting. I'm sure I probably screwed something up! I can't remember which ones I removed but I made sure that I kep all of the required programs that were listed.

Frankly I don't think websites should encourage the use of msconfig as some sort of everyday disabling facility. It is for diagnostics. You can often disable software from its own provided facilities rather than rushing to msconfig. If not, then fine msconfig can be used for this as a last resort. I wonder why TaskMonitor, SystemTray and LoadPowerProfile are considered "essential" (not that you'd have saved anything by disabling them). Hard to see how anything in the "Startup tab" caused this, unless you strayed into other areas. Were any of these things you unticked malware? Sometimes viruses and malware do not like you disabling them - there can be a ritual for these. I don't think you need to go to BIOS (unless you want to invoke another HD). BIOS is not found in the start menu, you hit a key while booting to get there. It depends on the mobo, could be Del key or one of the F keys. Are you just loading the W2k CD from DOS somehow? W2k uses NTFS so you would have to reformat first. Perhaps the best answer is to simply overlay W98 right now. Whatever shape W98 comes back in (and it should be pretty reasonable) you will then be able to backup your important stuff first, then reformat and install W2k. I would get some advice on the latter. Derek.W

I know I probably shouldn't have messed with the msconfig thing. Hindsight.. you know the rest. Anyhow I would love to just be able to restore win 98 somehow but I can't open anything in safe mode is goes right to the msconfig error line 1 message then shuts down. I thought if I could get the CD drive to load 1st I would load 2000 and use it. I'm assuming this pc loads from the HD first as the cd will not load. I've been told to change the order of the boot process in the bios to CD 1st. I can locate a set up menu from F10 but have no options for booting. I've tried other F keys and the delete but no success. I'm regretting ever trying to "clean" anything at all! thanks in advance for all of the advice Kevin

Did you ever make a Startup disk (floppy)? If not, on any other machine go to www.bootdisk.com and download a boot disk for W98 "with CD-ROM support". [The Alt versions on there are just other download websites]. You then use the download to make a floppy on the other machine. Don't just copy the download itself onto the floppy. You bung the floppy into your dud machine then power on. It will temporarily move the CD-ROM up to another letter, grabbing the usual one for a RAM drive. The W98 Startup Disk moves D to E or whatever. Some downloaded ones move the CD-ROM to R. Watch the screen as it boots and it will tell you. You then put in your W98 CD. Switch to the temporary CD drive letter, if it's E then you type E: and hit Return key. You then type setup (hit Return) and wait for Bill Gates to put humpty together again. Maybe the odd program will need re-installing afterwards but it usually goes quite well. As I said, you need to format the partition to NTFS to install W2k. I'm no expert on W2k procedures so get the "How To's" from the Windows 2000 forum (unless some W2k whizzy sees this post). Derek.W

The 'msconfig error in line 1' is probably 'error in config.sys in line 1'. You can disable the loading of config.sys in msconfig. You didn't say if you'd gone into the 'advanced' section of msconfig but there is an option there to 'enable startup menu'. If that's checked then that's why the menu is coming up. F10 gets you into compaq setup if you need to change the boot drive order.