Have a HP pavilion comp. and the CD-rom stopped working. Got an external CD-rewritter backpack. Downloaded the driver from their site. Hooked up the cd-rewriter. It assigned the D letter to it. Everything looked great, worked fine. Then installed my son's CD. It installed it, then required direct x and media player to be installed as well (wasn't sure if we had those on there already) so clicked okay. It then said to restart, I did. And now, Windows will not load. So, I don't know if it was from the CD-rewriter, or the CD, or what?? I get the logon box, hear the happy little music, see the background image and even a quick flash of the task bar, then nothing. Have tried to start in safe mode, still nothing. Have tried to use the restore points in DOS mode, still nothing. I did notice when I do the ctrl alt delete, the task manager does not show explorer running, only some of the utilities of the antivirus program and something called hidserv. I hope someone can please help me...? So frustrating!

"Have tried to use the restore points in DOS mode, still nothing."

By the above do you mean "scanreg/restore"?

"Hooked up the cd-rewriter. It assigned the D letter to it. Everything looked great, worked fine."

And; "So, I don't know if it was from the CD-rewriter, or the CD, or what??"

Based upon these two statements it's something after the cd-rewriter install. It appears that a driver isn't loading fully and as a result explorer isn't loading.

Try booting holding down the F8 or Ctrl key to get the boot menu and choose Bootlog. Once it fails, use "EDIT bootlog.txt" in DOS (without the quotes) to read the file and see where it's failing.

"By the above do you mean "scanreg/restore"?" -Yes

Okay, when I get into the boot menu, it says "logged (\bootlog.txt)". chose that, and of course it failed. So, went back into boot menu after shutting down.

"Once it fails, use "EDIT bootlog.txt" in DOS (without the quotes) to read the file and see where it's failing." -Okay, not quite sure what this means. There is no menu choice stating "Edit bootlog.txt", so then I thought maybe you meant to type that in under the command prompt area. That didn't work either. There is a step by step confirmation menu choice. I have tried that before, and I don't notice anything stating that something is not right (although most of the info. that pops up I don't 'get' anyhow). So, I'm not quite sure what you mean...?

Here is another thing (don’t know if it will make a difference or not) but I do have the screwed up comp. networked to the computer I am currently using. I didn’t think it would work, but I am able to access the files of the screwed up comp. Is there any way that this can be helpful?

Have you tried running scandisk on the C: drive? (Boot with an EBD (Emergency Boot Disk) startup disk.)

Also have a look at this;

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=188867&product=w98

(Troubleshooting Windows 98 Startup Problems)

and see if anything applies. Post back any results.

Or you could perform a new installation in a new folder to assist in troubleshooting if you have the disk space.

Yeah, have run the scan disk using a startup disk. Had no errors, ran a full scan. Weird thing is, it then asked next driver? So, I said yes, and it then scanned drive D (which is the drive is assigned to the new external CDRW, I believe). But, it didn't ask to check the original cd-rom drive (m) or the floppy (a). Weird. Wondering if maybe it has assigned the drive D as another hard drive or something?? Or it is trying to start Windows with it? Anyhow, currently I am trying to get into BIOS to choose setup defaults and then maybe boot from the hard drive (someone gave me this advice). BUT, I cannot locate which darned key I need to type when booting to get into the BIOS! Have tried del, esc, f1, f2, f9, page up, page down, and more. Bios is not the same thing as the place one gets to when pushing the ctrl or f8 key (the safe mode area?), correct?

Figured out it was f1 (just was pushing it at wrong time). Tried setup default. Didn't work. Don't know what else to do there..?