[Suite Chic]

I'm having trouble booting another PC. The computer is fairly old and runs on Windows ME and as far as I know there were no other problems before this incident occured. My friend and I are both pretty much at a lost when it comes to these sorts of problems, so please bare with me as I try to explain the problem.

The problem is nothing happens whenthe PC is started. The only images seen are the standard teal background and a 'busy' cursor. You can move the mouse freely but there's no start menu or desktop icons or anything. On some tries the PC will get as far as playing a start up sound, but mostly it'll sit there for hours and do nothing. I tried starting in safe mode but the same problem occurs even there. I figured we'd have to go about reformatting but thought I'd check to see if anyone with knowledge of these things had a better solution before I tried such a thing since she's most afraid of losing all her data.

Thanks in advance.

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Did you make a Win ME boot up floppy at an install or have access to one?

Ron

[Major Payne]

Did you make a Win ME boot up floppy at an install or have access to one?

Ron

[mcpscomp]

It sound like you have access to a ME CD. if so you can reinstall the operating system without losing data. Nothing to panic about.

[Suite Chic]

I found out this bit of trouble last night. Not only does she not have a ME boot disk but her floppy drive seems to be.. broken? somehow. It's not reading disks. Also she can't even find her original ME disc, just an old 98 SE disc. We're pretty screwed aren't we?

[Major Payne]

Try installing Win 98 SE and see what happens. Nothing to lose at this point.

Ron

[mcpscomp]

I forgot, did you try to boot it in safe mode? No eh? I have a feeling that it will boot up in safe mode. The way you explain sound like it would do.
If it boot up , back up what you need.

[mcpscomp]

Hey Major Payne They still have some hope. If you have them put 98 in then what they gain will be a guaranted lost !!!!!!!!!!!!
Even if the thing won't boot up they can alway take the HD put it in another machine to get their data back. I did not mention this because they sound like they doesn't know much about computer and I did not want to confuse them. Beside that we did not even hear any thing from the TECHs yet.

[Major Payne]

If they have a full install cd of Win 98 SE and it does not give them an error about the format of the HD, file structure, etc., during the disk scan process, then it should allow them to at least install a good operating system to boot into and their data should then be recoverable as it shouldn't have been lost at this point.

I would recommend they read Admin's good Windows 98/95 guides and tutorials before going on.

Ron

[wannabe1]

Hi Suite Chic...

This sounds like a corrupt registry hive. If we can get to a command prompt, we can probably bring this one back.

Try tapping the F8 key during the boot sequence to boot to Safe Mode options. In the Options screen (providing you get this far) look for the option to start with "Command prompt only" or similar.

Let me know if you are able to get to a command prompt this way.

wannabe1

[Suite Chic]

Trying to boot in safe mode didn't work in the past but as soon as I'm in from work today I'll try these things again before trying your idea of using 98 SE. I'll also be reading that tutorial in the near future regardless of what my outcome. Thanks guys.

[wannabe1]

Let's not try to install Win98 just yet...but...please download and create a Win98SE OEM Startup disk. Download the file and save it to your desktop. Double click on the downloaded file and put a floppy diskette in the floppy drive when prompted to do so. This will create the startup disk for you. Once you have created this disk, post back and we'll see if we can get this machine up and running.

wannabe1