When I turn on my system the machine appears to boot and then displays the message: It is now safe to shutdown your system. This is a clone, Pentium 166 running W98 with a standard hardware configuration (i.e. 32Mb, 2Gb hard drive, CD drive). I know that it might be old but I still need to use it. Here is what I have tried: Safe-Mode does the same thing as I mentioned above. Just display the message to shutdown. Step by Step confirmation (where I indicate yes to load device drivers but no for the nvetbios.vxd, msmouse.vxd) does not work either. I can get to the command prompt and move around and can see all of the files, including taking a look at System.ini. Does anybody have any ideas?

you could try re-installing windows over the top of itself, though personally i would format the hdd and do a clean install, but i know this is not always convenient.

I don't know for.. Just try these.. Reset mobo..check power button.. unplug the power cord..boot up w/ a start up disk..and scandisk if u can get in!

See this MS note. http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q141/8/98.asp

Thanks to everyone for all of your ideas. I am going to go through each of them and try leaving the re-install to the end (hopefully based on Q141/8/98 I can get winit.exe working since it appears to be the easiest). Jamie