Compact presario 1620, on start up I recieve the following message vmm.vxd, shell.vxd, vtd.vxd, vxdldr.vxd, vpicd.vxd, vwin32.vxd files are missing. I tried using the start up disk, start w/ cd rom support, and safe mode and I am unable to get the computer to start windows. I have also run scandisk, and that did not fix the problem. Now I am stuck in DOS at a command prompt. The system had win98 on it prior the the problem. Any ideas as to what I shouldtry now (besides reformating and starting from scratch?

All of these are driver libriaries. Your best bet would be to reinstall windows. You don't have to format just run the setup program again. This will keep all of your files intact and rebuild all your corrupted system files. You will lose any prefrences like wallpaper. HTH, wcr3d

Yes! Pass the word. Reinstalling windows is a good way to fix problems. Everyone seems to be so reluctant to do it. But it's easy and fairly quick compared to trying to find a specific fix for a problem.

Sort of... If you reinstall Windows, however, and the problem stems from Internet Explorer (which VERY many problems do, since it is so emmbedded into most aspects of Windows). Given this fact, the best thing to do when reinstalling Windows is to rename IEMIGRAT.DLL to IEMIGRAT.XYZ. It's in the C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM directory. Renaming this file fakes Windows into thinking there is no version of Internet Explorer on the machine, so it replaces ALL Internet Explorer files. This will only work for Windows 98 (or if installing Win98 over Win95). In Windows 95, if you reinstall over itself and you've upgraded Internet Explorer at all, you will break Windows... don't do it. Go to http://support.microsoft.com and look for a Knowledge Base article on manually uninstalling Internet Explorer 4 or 5 from Windows 95. Trust me... I'm a Microsoft Support Tech... it'll save you some heartache.

I have to ask what you've been doing to cause this problem ? Files don't go missing on their own so have you (or someone else) been carelessly deleting stuff. Your don't think your "missing" files are core Win98 files so they are probably to do with one of your hardware devices, it's drivers, or some software you've installed and deleted. Have you been deleting programmes without using Add/Remove, bad thing to do. I'm not sure reinstalling Windows is necessarily going to solve this problem. Try doing a scanreg back to before this started. Keep us posted

Do a "ftp" search you can go to - www.lycos.com and look for the "ftp" and click on it then type in the file you are missing, then download it - and install - simple