I have called the Dell people and they can't help me. I have faith that someone here has more sence than them. I was restarting my computer ans accidently hit the button that says "restart in MS-DOS Mode" How do I get out of here? I have rebooted 1000 times, typed "exit" and also tried restarting in safemode. Nothing has worked. Will someone please thing on this and give me some feedback. Thank you in advance!!

When you restart from the startup menu and select Safe Mode do you still get the black DOS screen? It's possible something has gone into Autoexec.bat so try typing the following commands from DOS: ren c:\autoexec.bat autoexec.old ren c:\config.sys config.old Type these "exactly" (including spaces) and hit Enter after each of the two command lines. The above action temporarily disables the two files and Windows should start without them. They are only necessary for games etc run in DOS. To restore them, if necessary, use these commands: ren c:\autoexec.old autoexec.bat ren c:\config.old config.sys some other bloke...

Just clicking on 'restart in msdos mode' won't lock you into a dos loop. Did you try to run some dos software that needed to reboot the computer in order to run? If so, this may help: http://www.computing.net/answers/wi... But under those circumstances, as Derek points out, just renaming those files will fix the problem.

Thank you for you replies but I still have a problem. I typed EXACTLY what was said and now this is what it says: Windows 98 is now starting your MS-DOS-based program. The following file is missing or corrupted: C:\WINDOWS\HIMEM.SYS The following file is missing or corrupted: C:\WINDOWS\DBLBUFF.SYS The following file is missing or corrupted: C:\IFSHLP.SYS HIMEM.SYS is missing. Make sure that the file is in your Windows directory. Windows has stopped. Press CTRL+ALT+DELETE to restart your computer. That's exactly what comes on the screen and I did what it said but it continues coming up the same. When I rebooted this time I pressed the F8 button until the Windows 98 Startup Menu came up I guess Im retarded because I really did a number on this computer it won't even let me start in safe mode or anything. It just tells me to ctrl alt delete to restart it. Is there anyway I can just Restore this D6%$ thing to an earlier date? Thanks again for your time. Have a great weekend!

SCANREG/RESTORE will restore your registry to an earlier date but that's not going to fix your problem. The 'windows is now starting your msdos based program' means your config.sys and autoexec.bat have been rewritten. Just use F8 and choose 'safe mode command prompt only' . Then do what Derek mentioned in #1 above. Edit You say you've renamed them but that's not possible, else you wouldn't be getting those messages. The fact that himem.sys and the other files can't be found is puzzling as they should exist regardless of what is calling them. Hopefully it's because windows is installed in a directory other than C:\WINDOWS and your 98 will run normally. The other possiblilty is those files were deleted. They can be replaced but the fact they are missing may mean that many others are too. But go ahead and rename config.sys and autoexec.bat, reboot and see what happens.

Run with DAVEINCAPS #4 but just a couple of questions and comments: Have you a floppy drive on that machine? Sometimes when you get a stack of files 'apparently' missing it is not actually true. There is a possibility that some common file such as msdos.sys or vmm32.vxd is missing/corrupted. Re-installing Windows might turn out to be the only practical answer. So here's the next question: Have you a W98 CD? some other bloke...

Thanks Guys for your time and help but it's gone back to the other mess it was doing before. I have no idea what I have done all I know is I accidently clicked that dang "restart in MS-DOS" thing yesterday instead of the "restart". This was running perfect before I did that. I think I'll just give it a rest for a bit before I throw it in the trash! :) Have a good day and again, thank you both.