none of my icons, or start menu pops up. i did 'ctrl alt del' and it has no programs running. my background is up, and there are no error messages. i have a feeling it had somethign to do with when i messed with my startup config when running 'msconfig.' any help?

Simply do a registry restore. Reboot and hit F8 while booting. Select command prompt. Type command\scanreg/restore and hit enter. Highlight a date that is prior to installing that program. Hit enter and you should be in business. Try leaving a space after the word Scanreg. If you are at a pure command prompt the entire string should look like this: C: C:cd\windows c:\windows C:\windows\command C:\windows\command\scanreg/restore When getting the command prompt from the boot choices you are already in the C: drive, so it's not necessary to change drive letters.

i actually have windows me and screwed up. i confused my 2 computers. f8 doesn't do anything, should it still? i tjust brings me to 4 options, 1. Normal, 2. Logged 3. Safe mode and 4 step by step confirmation

Try booting to safe mode. Hopefully the normal desktop will load. Then type scanreg /restore on the windows ME run line. Also, since it's being run from within windows you need to make sure there's a space between 'scanreg' and the forward slash. (For dos the space is optional.)

nothing shows up in safe mode... any other suggestions? i thought of trying to make a boot disk with ms-dos.. cause me doesn't have that option when you click f8, but i don't know how to do that..

i have a dell resource cd that had DOS on it, and i followed your instructions about scanreg/restore. this,however, didn't fix the problem. perhaps there are other things i must restore?

So you successfully ran a scanreg/restore and restored a registry from before the problem started but that didn't help? Some of the items that run from MSCONFIG--STARTUP are in the registry and some are not. It doesn't seem likely that changing the STARTUP items would cause the problem you're having but I guess that's the place to start since you believe you changed them. Restoring a previous registry would fix the registry ones but not the others. To restore those you'd need to move the links. I guess you could give that a try. I take it you think you disabled some items in MSCONFIG--STARTUP and after that it didn't boot right? Boot up with a bootdisk. A 98 disk will work. At the a:\> prompt type: copy c:\windows\startm~1\programs\disabl~1\*.LNK c:\windows\startm~1\programs\startup\*.LNK and enter. All that is on one line with no spaces except before the two c:\. Also the ~1 is a ~one (the number) and not ~L. Then type: del c:\windows\startm~1\programs\disabl~1\*.LNK and enter. Those are the commands that work on my 98. I don't have an ME machine setup right now but I think it's the same. The commands need to be typed in exactly that way. If it doesn't work the problem must be elsewhere. You may need to reinstall ME over the existing setup.