got a sony vaio laptop on the blink running me...I can just barely startup in safe mode and even then get alot of programs that won't open, system restore won't work, and windows explorer freezes, alot. I got a boot disc from bootdisk.com but I basicly need a copy of some system recovery disks. scanreg/restore and scandisk/all/surface did little more than waste time. The computer belongs to my nephew so the recovery cd is long lost but a copy of some floppies would really be appreciated. If anyone can help by giving me a link or those disks, then thanks in advance.

If the windows operating system is damaged, you will need a windows cd to recover it. I would just format and do a fresh install instead. Go to Amazon and get a copy of windows 98SE. The price is really low now. Kevin.

Next to last resort: Boot from the startup diskette and located the folder C:\Windows\Options\CABS and find the SETUP.exe program. (It may be in the C:\Windows\Options\Install on some systems). You can run this program from a boot diskette to re-install Windows ME. All you will need is the systems "ProductKey" used to install Windows on that machine. You can use DOS EDIT (on some boot diskettes) to locate the ProductKey. Do: A:\} EDIT C:\Windows\System.dat and then search for keyword ProductKey, following it will be the 25 character product key for his system. Use it after starting SETUP. This will reinstall Windows ME over the existing copy, and hopefully correct many of the problems.

thanks for the advice, guys. Jack, the info you gave me was awesome, everything started to work but i received an error that said: unable to load user.exe, this was right after i ran the setup.exe file from dos. the disk was checked and the registry was updated but that was as far as i got. any further advice would be greatly appreciated...