Got a message on my father-in-laws emachines 400i that a file is missing and now it won't load windows. I tried reinstalling windows with the restore cd, but the computer won't recognize the cd driver. It gives a message "device driver not found". The cd-rom worked before the computer crashed. I tried several methods to get the computer to recognize the cd-rom, which is not the orginal cd-rom that came with the computer, to no avail. Does anyone know how to get the computer to recognize the cd-rom so I can reinstall windows? Thanks.

You could try booting with a win98 boot disk and see if the computer will recognise the drive in dos. Before you reformat, have you tried to enter safe mode? Do you remember what file was reported as missing? If the problem occurred within the last five days, running 'c:\windows\command scanreg /restore' from dos might be able to recover the computer.

The missing file is vshinit.vxd. The error says "windows registry or system.ini refers to this file, but it's missing". After I hit a key windows loads to a blank desktop with error message "MPR.EXE page fault at kernel32.dll at 015f:bffb89e4" and ".dll file c:\windows\system\msvcrt.dll not found" I tried the boot disk with no luck, it didn't recognize the cd-rom device b/c it still missing the driver. I also tried scanreg/restore but it was too late, none of the dates had a good restore. What to do? Thanks, Rob

The file vshinit.vxd is part of McAffee virus scan. You might try uninstalling and reinstalling it. The MPR.exe error is often caused by a corrupt password list. try deleting or renaming any file ending with the .pwl extension. You should find them in C:\windows. Of course after you do this, you will lose your passwords (if used).

Thanks for your time and help Rimfire. I did some research on the .vxd file and it seems it's a common problem. I would do as you suggested, only I can't use windows to do the uninstall/reinstall of Mcaffee b/c windows won't load. Can I accomplish using the c:/ prompt?

I think it is the MPR.exe which is stopping you from entering windows. From the c:>\ prompt type "cd windows". Then find out how many password file there are by typing "dir *.pwl". Then you can rename them by typing "ren *.pwl *.pwx". There is a space before each '*'. From there you can try to boot into windows. The quick way is to type "win". You will still receive the error message concerning the McAffee file, ignore that for now. Have you checked if the CDROM is listed in bios? It is possible that it has in fact failed although it sounds like it might be a symptom of another problem. You didn't mention if you had tried booting to safe mode (press F8 just a windows starts to load (right after the checking DMI message)). Also have you checked if the CDROM will work in a DOS environment? To do this , boot with a boot disk, enabling CDROM support. Watch the screen for the message which tells you the drive letter assigned to the drive. Place a CD in the drive then type the letter assigned followed by a colon and press enter. The prompt will cange to x:>\ where x is the letter assigned. If you succeed in getting to this point, it sounds like the drive is OK. Confirm this by typing "dir" followed by the enter key. A list of files should scroll up the screen.

I was able to reinstall windows using the cab file on the hard drive. I typed c:/windows/options/cabs/set.exe. I had to fix several errors first and the type the file over a few time but finally it when all the way through the setup and reinstalled windows without having to reformat the hard drive. I still wanted to reformat the hard drive, so I copied the cd-rom driver files to the hard drive and set the Bios to boot the CD-rom first. The restore cd kicked in and I did a reinstall again, this time reformatting the drive to clean any residual problems. Now the computer is back to factory setting and a clean hard drive. It took some time figuring all this out, and thanks for you help RemFire.