I have an ASUS P.1700 w/256mb ram and a 20gb and 4gb hard drives. The other day I had to download the Netzero dialer program, when I went to dial in and get online it rejected my network setings, I went to thier help to find out what they recommend set the network setting to that, restarted the computer and it still did not work. Finally I got pissed off and removed the dialer software and it asked my if I wanted to restart my computer and I clicked yes. Now when I go to boot my computer it freezes at the win98 logo screen with the blue bar at the bottom. I can only boot to safe mode, so I ran the system file checker and it listed two currupted files so I went to restore them and It could not find my F drive(secondary slave) which is the only cd drive that works. I am pritty shure that those two currupted files is the problem.

Thanks,
Tim

Safe mode does not load the driver for a cd-rom, which is why you don't see it.

There are two choices here: DOS boot disk with CD_ROM support, and run the extract command from there, or in place Windows repair.

That is, those are the choices if you're assumption is correct.

Before making that assumption, a question or two...

What version of windows (95, 98, 98se, me)?

What were the files? SFC had a big bug with earlier versions of windows where it would replace two critical files with the wrong version....I cannot recall both off the top of my head, but one was USER.EXE....darn, what was the other one.

Without getting too into it, there are two files that are identically named...one (of each) is used in setup and has limited function, and the other loads with Windows.

SFC would load the limited use files and this would really hoarke up a system

I am using win98se, and the files where the user.exe and setup.dll.

user.exe concerns me already...setup.dll....hmmm....

Got your windows disk? I think ultimately you will be better off going the in place repair route.

ok just rember I have a lot of info that I need to save but I can't get it off so I can't reformat my hard drive. Lets do the repair route.

All you need to do is reinstall Windows 98 over itself.

So, boot with your windows cd, and when Windows setup asks you where you want to install to, install to the SAME windows directory (default is c:\windows, but check that in safe mode since I've seen many variations, such as c:\win, c:\win98....)

All settings and programs will remain intact if you do it this way...

ps don't do anythng that involves formatting or fdisk

Ok tried that before and after the first restart at the win98 logo and the moving blue bar at the bottom my computer freezes, I can't get it to load enough to finish the install process for win98.(Thinking of transfering to 4gb hd and reimage with xp home )

Sounds like faulty hardware....

Did you try booting up in step by step mode? See at what point it hangs.

Also, remove all non-essential hardware.

Tried booting in step by step and it makes it though that fine then we get the second win98 screen w/ the moving blue bar at the bottom and after it goes past about 3 times my pc freezes.

First did you try removing all non-essential hardware...

Just motherboard, memory, video (remove printers,sound, usb...anything else).

Second, could be a corrupt logo file....

Everything in my computer is integrated with my mother board, the only hardware I had to add is my modem.

Did you remove it?

It would help if you would help rule things out instead of just "it's not that."

Next step, open in safe mode.

START > RUN, type sysedit.exe

This will open the system editor. Copy and paste the AUTOEXEC.BAT, CONFIG.SYS, WIN.INI, SYSTEM.INI here....


Please put some separation in between the files

Theres a problem with that, I am not using my computer to post here, I am using an old 233 that has no cd or floppy drives, it is our backup computer (called old fathfull) that we use when both our computers go down, I have two drives and I set the one that works to sec.master, the cd drive works in ms dos mode but not in windows, then when I boot to safe mode and check the device manager it lists no cd drives. I have no Idea whats going on.

ok,,,,let me see if I can type something up or find something pre-typed so you can print it.....

I was just trying to simplify things...figure I could see something wrong before you can.

Off to the Ms Knowledge base....