I have an old computer from 2001 that is running ME. I really don't care about it at all, except for the fact that there are a few files on it that I want to recover.
So, yesterday I turned it on, after about 8 months of being off, and went through the motions:
So...I pressed ON:
Then "wininit.exe is missing. Press any key to continue"...this I was expecting, since I had to delete wininit.exe in the past because it was messing up my Norton antivirus software.
So I pressed the anykey, and went about it normally. The computer booted up, and I got into windows, but it wasn't recognizing my mouse. So I did a search for the hardware in the "add new hardware" function in the control panel, and it recognized it. However, the mouse still wasn't working, so I restarted the computer.
Then the same thing...except this time when I pressed the anykey, I waited...and waited..and waited. I cooked supper, and came back and still...waiting. The computer didn't go into windows. So I did a hard-reset and booted into safe mode.
So I got into safe mode, and then a big white box popped up:
"ERROR LOADING EXPLORER.EXE. YOU MUST REINSTALL WINDOWS"
What the...?
Anyway, I had the windows ME installation CD so I put that in and booted the computer from that for a reinstall. The CD said that it has to run scandisk first, so I did that, and it said there was a problem with the FAT it could not repair, and thus could not install windows.
I also went to bootdisk.com, and made a floppy with the Windows ME boot on it, but when I put it in my computer and turn it on, it doesn't recognize that it's even there.
So, my main question is: is there any way for me to get back into windows to retrieve my files, or is it a lost cause? I really don't care about the computer at all and am thus going to trash it once I get what I need from it.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.