Computer boots in safe mode, command prompt with the following message displayed on screen: Blue bar at top - SPOOL32 Information in box says: There is an error in your config.sys file on line 6. The following file is missing or corrupted: C:/Windows/EMM386.exe Error in config.sys Line 7. Series of files listed that are missing or corrupted: C:/Windows/himem.sys C:/Windows/dblbuff.sys C:/Windows/ifshlp.sys Saya himem is not available, cannot find win.com. At bottom of info box says to run regedit, don't know why. Any help would be appreciated, computer contains college level documents that need to be recovered.

From a dos prompt type dir c:\windows\win.com and enter. Does it show the win.com file or does it say 'file not found'? If it's not there, then most likely the other ones aren't either. An over-the-top reinstall may fix it. But post back the above results first.

Sorry, info is being relayed by wife 90 miles from home, forgot last line that was displayed by computer, which was: Cannot find win.com

Sometimes it's there but the boot process isn't looking in the right place. If the DIR command finds it then one of your boot files is corrupt. Otherwise the file is actually missing. In that case we could either email you the missing files or you could do the reinstall. The problem with emailing the files is there may be more missing than are showing on bootup. Another thing to try would be to rename config.sys so it doesn't run. From a dos prompt type ren c:\config.sys config.old. Then try a normal bootup. It'll probably still say it can't find win.com but it won't hurt to try.

I thnk your computer is telling you what the problem is - it can't find the files! Search Engines Are Your Friends ☺ Morpheus: There is a difference between knowing the path and walking the path. "The Matrix"

On another comnputer download a diagnositc utility download from the maker of at least one of your hard drives, ane execute the download to have it make (a)floppy(ies). Boot your computer with the bootablr floppy and run bith the short and long diagnosics for the hard drive that is giving you probems. If it passes both diagnostics, continue trying to get your Windows working. If it physically passes the diagnostics but there are data organization problems, that's also a pass, but there may be major things wrong with your Windows installation -continue trying to get your Windows working. If it fails either test physically, you need to connect the hard drive on another computer as a slave, or as master on the secondary IDE on that computer, and copy what you can from the failing hard drive while you still can. ...... You could try an "overtop" install/Setup of Windows, if Windows was installed from a regular Win 98 CD. If you still have the brand name system's original software on this computer, it may have come with only a Recovery CD instead of a Windows CD. Some Recovery CD's are actually Windows CD's with added stuff that allows you to access the hidden partition and restore your other original software - that type can be often be used the same way as a Windows CD. See response 5 and 23 in this: http://www.computing.net/windows95/... Same applies to Win98 except you use a Win 98 Startup Disk, although it probably doesn't matter whether it is a Win98 or Win98SE one.

Zenith Yep, but the particular missing files reported are also a classic symptom of just msdos.sys being missing or corrupted. Windows gets confused and thinks a whole stack of files have gone. I think that is what DAVEINCAPS was trying to establish. Getting msdos.sys replaced might be a way forward (depending on what feedback we get), or the over the top install as mentioned. DerekW