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After having problems with my computer last night, I shut it down and then rebooted. Everything seemed to load up fine, however, until after the Windows 98 screen. It loaded my background, Norton AntiVirus, and even played the "start-up music"--but that was all it loaded. No desktop, no system tray, no icons. When I pressed the start menu key on my keyboard, I got an error message stating that Kernel32 had performed an illegal operation. When I pressed Ctrl+Alt+Delete, the window came up and was empty, and the computer froze.
I was told that all I could do was format the hard drive and reinstall 98, but I was hoping there could be an alternative so that I could save what I had on the hard drive.
Hi Krysten, hi everyone,
NO... don't format yet!... if my suggestion below doesn't do it, we will succeed very soon (w/o re-formatting)! ;-)
My suggestion is to restore a previous version of the registry:
Start in Dos mode (press F8 at bootup before message "Windows starting", choose MS-Dos option from Starting Menu)At Dos prompt, type:
CD\
SCANREG /RESTORE
- You have the choice b/w 5 dates (last 5 good Windows startups)
- Choose a version of the registry for which Windows worked fine.
- Reboot.HTH
Have a good day,
Gérard from Paris, France
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Well Gérard, I did as you said, and everything went through fine, yet I still only had the background and Norton AntiVirus loading. So, I went back to the earliest date listed, and I then got a message telling me that System.ini had been removed.
So, unless you (or anyone else) can come up with something else, it looks like I'm stuck with reformatting the hard drive.
Thanks for all your help, though!!
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Alright then, new question...since I can't get anything to work, is there any way I could retrieve my files that are on the computer before I reformat the hard drive?
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DO NOT REFORMAT!
If all eslse fails try an an install 'on top' first.
Try booting up in safe mode. Hold the ctrl key down during the boot.
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I tried the safe mode one, but still nothing...and I've got a new option I'm going to try before installing 98 over top.
If anyone's done this before, let me know if it worked...
"A.: I could possibly take your hd out, and make it a slave to my own, and then retrive the files that way (then I don't have to boot an os from your hd, but I don't know if I will have to format it to make it a slave or not)"
Would doing that help in saving my files, even though I would most likely have to format (which I'll probably end up doing anyway)?
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win98 is (in)famous for probs like these.
Its these people with half baked brains who keep telling "format reistal"
Here in India, we have a saying that means something like this "there is no single cure to all ills, if there is then it is liqour"Do not format...not yet...
okey scanreg /restore did not work, do a instal of windows over itself. (most common dlls and other system files will be replaced with the original version)
if that too does not work, then you could slave ur disk to another comp and transfer files.
U need not format your disk to to that
it is very much possible to transfer YOUR files to your friend's comp before formating.
However when installing windows YOUR hard disk MUST be made master, else the MBR will be written not to yours but his hard disk.post back if u have any other query,
Kailas
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An install 'on top' will 'normally' restore the system without losing any valuable data or programs.
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I certainly agree with the above advice. The procedures I outlined in this old thread will save your data. This is not a quick and easy fix but when windows is up and running your data will be intact.
http://computing.net/windowsme/wwwboard/forum/36439.html
Just in case your drive is failing, I'd back up the data you need to save to cd or another hard disk. I don't back up data as often as I should and this is the only way I've been able to get a new install of windows without losing all my stuff.
Let us know how you're doing.
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I wish I'd checked back here a bit earlier!!
My friend and I went ahead and tried the hard drive deal, just to see if it would work (to be quite honest, I was tired of messing with it, and was close to reformatting anyway due to my lack of patience!). We got all of the files that needed to be saved transferred to his hard drive, and the others can easily be redownloaded after the format.
Thanks to everyone that gave suggestions, I'm sure I'll probably need to refer back to them sometime again!! =)
Oh, and SkipCox, thanks for reminding me to back up my data...I almost forgot!!
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Hi Kristen, Kailas, ScanCox, hi everyone,
OK for having managed to retrieve data!
I can see in this thread and others, web addresses given but inactive!
What a pity! How nice it would be for readers to get them activated!... Maybe, you don't know how to do this... find it below:(exactly the Html code)
[a href="XXX" target="_blank"][i][font color=blue]XXX[/font][/i][/a]
Just replace the ] by "greater than" and [ by "lower than" (I personaly have a model in a .txt file and a copy and paste helps).
Remember... it's so very nice to get an active link! ;-)Thanks,
Have a good day,
Gérard from Paris, France
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OK, good point. I'll build a text file too then my "hate all that typing" argument won't work anymore. And yes, I do need the html practice. ;-)
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For what its worth, I made a read-only text file, accessed by a shortcut button in the IE Links bar.
So with half a brain I can just click the button, plonk the "target" and "name" stuff into the text file then copy/paste it into the forum. I exit the file without saving after Copy.
The keys Ctrl+C (Copy) and Ctrl+V (Paste) come in very handy.
Non-activated links don't bother me tho, just swipe the URL, hit those keys again and its in the address line - bingo.
Derek
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Hi Derek, hi everyone,
Non-activated links don't bother me but I find it so nicer for readers to activate them! I didn't criticized, I just suggested and gave the right code to those who were wondering how to do.
So easy to just click! another advantage in activating is that a target="_blank" permits to get immediately a new page.
Have a good day,
Gérard from Paris, France
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