Working on a friends computer.

Details;

Installed a new 256mb pc100,got error-0232 extended ram failed at offset 1a.Ok,so this was bad ram?

But now when I bootup,windows 98 gets stuck at the c prompt.It will not boot into safe mode.

At the c prompt I typed win,it said himem.sys is missing.

Do I have to reinstall windows?

He is using win98(I think?),but he has no cd or boot disk.I have a win98se cd and a boot disk.

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jou jye 550w psu
Thermalright SP 97
xp2500-m@200x11
fx5600@360&600
Thermaltake Lanfire
WDCaviar 60gb
Seagate Barracuda 80gb

;~}

"Installed a new 256mb pc100,got error-0232 extended ram failed at offset 1a.Ok,so this was bad ram?"

Yes - probably bad (or incompatible) ram. Was it replaced? Are those his computer specs or yours?

Himem.sys won't load if it discovers bad memory - Windows won't run without himem.sys

I'm just looking for clues at the scene of the crime

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He already has 128mb pc100.He just wanted to extend the capacity.

Can I reload himem.sys?If so how?

nf7-s v2.0
jou jye 550w psu
Thermalright SP 97
xp2500-m@200x11
fx5600@360&600
Thermaltake Lanfire
WDCaviar 60gb
Seagate Barracuda 80gb

;~}

Try removing the (new) memory chip that seems to be generating the error - if that's the problem, himem.sys should load on its own.

Possibly his system doesn't support 256Mb chips - or, at least, not that one, or not in that configuration. This is where it's nice to have the motherboard manual.

You could check to see if the himem.sys actually is missing, and/or replace it with a new copy - it should be in c:\windows

I'm just looking for clues at the scene of the crime

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"Himem.sys won't load if it discovers bad memory - Windows won't run without himem.sys"

AND

"Try removing the (new) memory chip that seems to be generating the error - if that's the problem, himem.sys should load on its own."

I agree w/ jboy. Eliminate the possibility of bad ram ~first~ before you start messing with the files.

Taken ram out already.

Need to replace himem.sys

Pc will not boot past c prompt

nf7-s v2.0
jou jye 550w psu
Thermalright SP 97
xp2500-m@200x11
fx5600@360&600
Thermaltake Lanfire
WDCaviar 60gb
Seagate Barracuda 80gb

;~}

.. so what's stopping you?

I'm just looking for clues at the scene of the crime

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Have him try typing:
path=c:\windows;c:\windows\command
then type
win

I did that,typed win.

It told me himem.sys is missing.

Am not sure how to replace himem.sys from floppy?

nf7-s v2.0
jou jye 550w psu
Thermalright SP 97
xp2500-m@200x11
fx5600@360&600
Thermaltake Lanfire
WDCaviar 60gb
Seagate Barracuda 80gb

;~}

Really? Ok

From wherever - boot disk or from a working Win98 box, as long as you have it on a floppy disk:

copy a:\himem.sys c:\windows

Have you bothered to check to see if it's already on the hard drive in question??

I'm just looking for clues at the scene of the crime

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Not sure how to check harddrive from c prompt?

If it was there wouldn't windows load?

sorry for bieng numb

nf7-s v2.0
jou jye 550w psu
Thermalright SP 97
xp2500-m@200x11
fx5600@360&600
Thermaltake Lanfire
WDCaviar 60gb
Seagate Barracuda 80gb

;~}

From a C:\> prompt;

cd windows

dir himem.sys

Well, it's nice to have the details - although the file could still be there and be corrupted (unusable) - or there could be a problem with the MSDOS.SYS configuration file

Just seems a bit odd if the only change had been the addition (and subsequent removal) of a memory stick

I'm just looking for clues at the scene of the crime

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Cheers guys,will try the copy method.

He lives 10 miles away,so I won't be able to report back for awile.Unless it works,then I'll report back from there.

nf7-s v2.0
jou jye 550w psu
Thermalright SP 97
xp2500-m@200x11
fx5600@360&600
Thermaltake Lanfire
WDCaviar 60gb
Seagate Barracuda 80gb

;~}

Yeah, give that a try - like I mentioned, it's more than a little odd.

If it still doesn't work, try ham's suggestion, or open MSDOS.SYS with the DOS editor (Edit) - if the file only contains a few lines, you'd need to replace it with the 'full' version from another machine runnig the same Winversion. It's just a text file (although it's usually 'protected' with the 'system' file attribute).

I'm just looking for clues at the scene of the crime

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I tried the copy method(it was there so I overwrit it) but I think that maybe I need to alter the config.sys(device=C:\windows\himem.sys)?

It gets even stranger.

I did a scandisk and it came up with all sorts of errors.

Fat chains bieng truncated?
1,244 lost clusters in 85 chains?

Also,there was a couple of "gobbledegook"files corrupted?They were strange symbols.

It also said that there was 5,095,424bytes of lost fragments(I think).That=6gb does it not?He only has a 6gb harddrive.

I'm quite stumped now,so what I've done is removed his harddrive and I'm going to put it in my pooter as a slave to have a look at it.

What's going on?

Oh btw,he tried opening an attachment just before I was going to insert the new ram.It did not open but as I was shutting the pooter off it tried opening.

nf7-s v2.0
jou jye 550w psu
Thermalright SP 97
xp2500-m@200x11
fx5600@360&600
Thermaltake Lanfire
WDCaviar 60gb
Seagate Barracuda 80gb

;~}

The errors you describe in your #15 are typical of bad or incompatable ram.

Would this have been caused by the bad 256mb stick?

It adds up actualy,yes.

OK,

If I do a scandisk,let it repair all errors,Don't save the lost file fragments?,it should all sort itself out?

He says he's got unbackedup NEEDED data(oops,learn to backup peeps).

OR is the data lost already?
Saying that,when I did a dir on C drive it showed the saved lost file fragments and some of his stuff.

nf7-s v2.0
jou jye 550w psu
Thermalright SP 97
xp2500-m@200x11
fx5600@360&600
Thermaltake Lanfire
WDCaviar 60gb
Seagate Barracuda 80gb

;~}

Just remembered

Scandisk would only work once the boot disk was loaded.

nf7-s v2.0
jou jye 550w psu
Thermalright SP 97
xp2500-m@200x11
fx5600@360&600
Thermaltake Lanfire
WDCaviar 60gb
Seagate Barracuda 80gb

;~}

I hope you made an 'undo disk' when you performed the scan.

You just don't let Scandisk mark an entire hard drive's worth of file fragments - that sounds very much like what would happen if scandisk was run on a hard drive that was incorrectly setup or identified in CMOS.

The data, while not exactly lost, would be extremely difficult to recover (unless you can 'undo' the scan (maybe))

The 256 should not have caused this - possibly there's a problem with the original RAM, or perhaps something occurred when adding/removing the new stick. Certainly bad RAM can cause all sorts of file errors - but not an entire drive's worth (without a little help)

Windows can load himem.sys without any help from config.sys - that's for DOS.

I'm just looking for clues at the scene of the crime

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Got a few undo disks

How does I use the undo disks?

If I got a file recovery program would this help/work?

I've heard of "Activefilerecover" and "Spinrite5" ?

nf7-s v2.0
jou jye 550w psu
Thermalright SP 97
xp2500-m@200x11
fx5600@360&600
Thermaltake Lanfire
WDCaviar 60gb
Seagate Barracuda 80gb

;~}

Well - to undo a previous scandisk repair, you would use the command line syntax:

scandisk /undo drive

where drive is the 'undo disk'

You would work backwards - most recent undo first.

I'm not sure how successful you would be.

It seems unlikely (to me) that this is the result of bad memory - unless the user did something that rewrote the entire disk (defrag?)

Are you certain that the drive is correctly identified in CMOS? Possibly an drive 'overlay' program was in use?

File recovery programs would not be of much use here - you have files already - they are the result of scandisk interpreting what it found and creating the recovered file fragments.

You can go through them one-at-a-time and try and determine what is what, but that sounds more like a career than an option.

I'm just looking for clues at the scene of the crime

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Lol yeah

So,if I was going to go down the Undo way

A:\scandisk/(\?)undo A (return)or would it be A: (return)

My friend has been complaining about "memory" for a while?but he knows way less than me!

Also,he complained to his isp about websites not loading fully?They said it might be a memory issue.

Hey,it may even be all my fault,as you so nicely sidestepped lol.

nf7-s v2.0
jou jye 550w psu
Thermalright SP 97
xp2500-m@200x11
fx5600@360&600
Thermaltake Lanfire
WDCaviar 60gb
Seagate Barracuda 80gb

;~}

Well, don't know enough to point any fingers ; )

Yeah, it seems like the initial difficulties were caused by bad RAM - that could cause file errors and himem.sys would not load if it detected bad RAM.

Running scandisk though, seems to be what has made the unholy mess now. I would guess that the drive is not being 'seen' correctly by the BIOS - which would cause scandisk to misinterpret the file structure.

If you're running scandisk from a boot floppy, you'll be switching disks a few times - if you're 'at' A:

scandisk /undo a:

would have to be the syntax - although you may be prompted (hopefully) to insert the actual undo disk.

{note the forward slash and the space, as well as the colon (:) for the drive letter}

Never actually performed quite this exact procedure - nor do I have a lot of confidence in scandisk undo.

I'm just looking for clues at the scene of the crime

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Cheers man,your bieng a BIG help,thanx xxx(not gay or owt)

No option but to try

nf7-s v2.0
jou jye 550w psu
Thermalright SP 97
xp2500-m@200x11
fx5600@360&600
Thermaltake Lanfire
WDCaviar 60gb
Seagate Barracuda 80gb

;~}

Not at all - this is a help site.

Just can't help but wonder if the hole's getting deeper.

May want to wait for some further input, but the more that's done on the disk, the less likely it will be to set things right.

Hope it works out

I'm just looking for clues at the scene of the crime

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News Flash

To Me anyway

If all goes well and the undo disks go ok....

What am I going to do when I get back to the C prompt ?

nf7-s v2.0
jou jye 550w psu
Thermalright SP 97
xp2500-m@200x11
fx5600@360&600
Thermaltake Lanfire
WDCaviar 60gb
Seagate Barracuda 80gb

;~}

Ok - well, theoretically, you should be no worse off. The drive is currently slaved to your machine? I'm guessing that the drive is not being correctly recognized in your machine - for the purpose of recovering your friend's data, hopefully popping the drive back into his machine will allow him to do that - although maybe only from DOS.

Thing is, if scandisk declares an entire drive full of fragments, either it's right and the drive is mush - or the drive is not being seen correctly by the system - either due to an odd CMOS entry or perhaps some sort of overlay software - and there's actually nothing wrong at all with the majority of the files on the drive.

Of course, the RAM problems would need to be sorted out - there is a RAM tester - memtest.

I'm just looking for clues at the scene of the crime

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The ram will "add up" if recognized. Note I said;

"...bad or incompatable ram."

I once inserted two extra Simms into a machine in hopes of getting more ram. It counted up OK and I thought all was well. After about twenty minutes of working on the machine I noticed strange file names etc. So I ran scandisk and it found all sorts of errors similar to what you described. It turns out the two Simms I inserted were 60Ns timing whereas the original two in the machine were 70Ns. (This is where I learned about ram timing.) The two different timings were incompatable and really jumbled the drive.

Update

Have got his hardrive on my pooter as a slave now
All his files seem to be there,Ive seen/opened/viewed them.I've also saved the entire hd to my desktop.

Online virus scan found 8 worms/trojans,namely,4x netsky.p,1 netsky.z and 1 trojan horse.

I think that scandisk changed most of the system files(have undo disks).

There are lots of .chk files,file0001.chk to file0033.chk and quite a few t3vv??? files.

There's no boot,autoexec,config files etc.

I have memtest86 and will check his ram first.

Should I get rid of the worms/trojans from his hd first?(From my pooter).

Would reloading windows be a better option?

nf7-s v2.0
jou jye 550w psu
Thermalright SP 97
xp2500-m@200x11
fx5600@360&600
Thermaltake Lanfire
WDCaviar 60gb
Seagate Barracuda 80gb

;~}

Hey Dan Penny

Oh sure - RAM errors may go unnoticed at first - the BIOS and himem perform only the most basic testing - and sure, files written after the RAM was installed would be suspect.

But - now the drive is in a different machine, and scandisk has filled it with 5Gb of file fragments - something must have happened between 'himem.sys is missing' and this.

It's got me a bit puzzled, plus you hate it when things go from bad to worse.

I suppose all of these disk errors could have been present originally yet somehow Windows was able to run (until the error that led to indigian posting)

IF that's the case, well, then we've wasted no small amount of time & effort and likely the best bet would be to wipe the drive, scan it thoroughly and reinstall Windows - file recovery would be more trouble than it's worth.

Of course, the memory issues in the original machine would have to be addressed as well.

It's just that every time I've had a disk scanner start reporting an entire drive to be filled with bad clusters or file fragments, it usually indicates that the drive isn't entered into the BIOS correctly, or else the drive is not far from total failure.

I'm just looking for clues at the scene of the crime

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The win98 folder is there aswell as the windows folder and program files folder

nf7-s v2.0
jou jye 550w psu
Thermalright SP 97
xp2500-m@200x11
fx5600@360&600
Thermaltake Lanfire
WDCaviar 60gb
Seagate Barracuda 80gb

;~}

I really appreciate the effort jboy and dan penny,cheers.

My system reads his 6gb as 4gb used 2gb free.

The .chk files and the 3fvv??? files total no more than 250kb

nf7-s v2.0
jou jye 550w psu
Thermalright SP 97
xp2500-m@200x11
fx5600@360&600
Thermaltake Lanfire
WDCaviar 60gb
Seagate Barracuda 80gb

;~}

Well, that's a horse of a different colour then - I wouldn't worry about such a small number. Initially you were declaring ' 5,095,424bytes of lost fragments' which was quite worrying.

I'd missed your intervening post (still having coffee)

Virus activity could well be the source of many of the problems.

I don't know what the t3vv files are, but autoexec & config are not necessary to Windows unless a low level virus scan is setup there - those are the DOS startups - and it doesn't sound as if your friend has maintained much protection on this system.

While much can be done with the drive slaved to your system, a proper scan for virus and other malware would likely need to be performed on the original machine in order to check the Windows registry.

I'm just looking for clues at the scene of the crime

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Thank you jboy you've been a brick,while I was just bricking it lol

I'll get rid of the worms etc then reinstall windows for him.

His system is really old,it originally had 95 on it.I'm going to recommend buying a new system.

nf7-s v2.0
jou jye 550w psu
Thermalright SP 97
xp2500-m@200x11
fx5600@360&600
Thermaltake Lanfire
WDCaviar 60gb
Seagate Barracuda 80gb

;~}

Well, didn't mean to sound so dire - just seemed like things were getting worse instead of better.

Depending on your needs, 95 is perfectly serviceable - I tend to install it on my marginal machines due to its low overhead - but, sure, there comes a point where it's more cost effective to take the plunge and benefit from newer technology.

It may prove simpler to do a clean reinstall to overcome the various issues, but precautions must be taken to prevent reinfection etc. Of course, the memory situation needs to be resolved first.

You can try reinstalling Windows into the original folder - worth a try, this preserves data (both good & bad) if you are unsuccessful in fixing 'as is'

Hope it all works out

I'm just looking for clues at the scene of the crime

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It's gone ok

Everythings there and everything works

A new machine is bieng lined up

Thanx again for time n effort

nf7-s v2.0
jou jye 550w psu
Thermalright SP 97
xp2500-m@200x11
fx5600@360&600
Thermaltake Lanfire
WDCaviar 60gb
Seagate Barracuda 80gb

;~}

Glad to hear it - sometimes things aren't quite as bad as they initially seem to be.

I'm just looking for clues at the scene of the crime

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