I need help -- I am not exactly computer savvy. Two days ago my wife turned on our home computer (an HP Pavilion 7850 (I think)) and four things happened. First, the quality of the display on the monitor was terrible (16 bit?), second, this message appeared, "rundll has caused an error in mmsystem.dll rundll will now close," third, the mouse was non-existent, and, fourth, no sound. The next day on my computer at work I typed in the error message on the microsoft web site and was given the solution of inserting "drivers=mmsytem.dll" to the [boot] section of system.ini. Not knowing what a system.ini file looks like, I pulled-up the system.ini file on my work computer and printed it out. That evening I pulled-up my system.ini file on my home computer. It did not look anything like the system.ini file on my work computer. The only section headings present were [boot] and [Password Lists]. Also, there was a bunch of gobbly-gook at the top. The only words I could make-out within the gobbly-gook were Photoshop 3.0. So, I typed in drivers=mmsytem.dll under [boot] and restarted. That got rid of the error message, but the graphics and mouse problem were still there. I eventually found my way to get the computer to start in trouble-shooting mode (where you tell it what files to start up with) and de-selected system.ini. This solved the mouse and sound problem, but the graphics/display problem is still there. Am I wrong to assume that I have a system.ini file problem? If that’s the problem, how do I get a new system.ini file or find out what to put in my existing system.ini file? I am at my wits end! Please help! Thank you.

If this has recently happened, AND, you have done no major installs, boot with your Startup (boot) disk and enter Scanreg/Restore Choose a date when everything worked ok. If you HAVE installed anything, it will need to be reinstalled. The gargage you are seeing in the file MAY have been induced by running Scandisk with Autofix set. Whenever you run it, run with the option OFF so that you can see the errors found before scandisk "tries" to "fix" them. Some of the automatic fixes (depending on the error), will cause corrupted files.

you can allso reinstall origenal sys.ini http://computing.net/windowsme/wwwboard/forum/30687.html allso its scanreg /restore with a space.

Try having a look at system properties in control panel. or press windows key+pause key in the keyboard Then system window will open up and select device manager. See if ur display drivers and mouse drivers are functioning properly. If not it shows a crash sign next to them. Go to their properties and read what fault it says.Do as it says.Most likely ull have to try reinstalling the drivers. This should solve the problem. Please let me know about it. Rohan

If all else fails, you can reinstall Windows ME from DOS (without formatting), and it will make a new System.ini file and all that, and will most likely fix the problem. -Burbble

MANY MANY THANKS for your collective suggestions! WhitPhil's advice worked perfectly -- thanks also wawadave for pointing-out the "space" in the scanreg /restore command. Also, Rohan - I didn't see any crach signs in device manager. Burble, my problem was fixed before I saw your post (good info. to know, though). - Ray P.