[danandchelle001]

Hi all i am new here ....
here is my issues i will try to explain as well as i can ...i will add more to help out better later

Okay.. we sold one of the computers and went to put windows 98 on so we could upgrade it back to the XP..
well in doing that the windows 98 will not stay on or something it keeps telling us to basically redue the windows on there keeps telling us a error says .. explorer error please reinstall windows so we have reinstalled about a hand ful of times and keeps doing the same thing the memory is fine there is plenty everything is running normally but we jsut cant get the windows to go all the way through i am not to sure why before we took everything off we never had any problems at all now since we did this it wont work right .. we get alot of dll. errors also .. my husband is so frustrated with the thing and we cant figure out why all the sudden it wont take anything on there anymore..

i know youll need more information please ask .. any help would be great!!!
thank you

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try to get an other copy of windows 98.

[S A A B]

try to get an other copy of windows 98.

[danandchelle001]

thanks im going to try to find one... the copy i am using now is only been used for me ..grandpa had it used 1 time... for some reason we cant boot it from cd have to use the disc..this is jsut really weird hopefully it is the disc .. and not anything else ..

[S A A B]

it probably is the disk, i cant think if anything else being the prob.

[LINKUP20GS]

Had you tried in the past to check the drive. Have run a surface scan to check for bad sectors? Is there any way to install the drive into another computer and run diagnostics and a surface scan? Seems to me that the drive has developed bad sectors or is about to fail. It is possible for the drive to start developing bad sectors and continue to accept information and then lose or corrupt it. Do you have a spare drive that you can install and then check the copy of win98? And as far as booting from a win98 cd it's not going to happen unless its a restore cd or if you made a bootable cd containing the windows 98 setup files. Let us know what happens good luck. Your friend in tech "Da Missing Link"

Edited by LINKUP20GS, 16 May 2005 - 12:36 PM.

[S A A B]

I think it wouldn't be a bad idea to reformat the harddisc if possible.
Make sure you dont have any valuable things on there you dont wanna lose.

hope it helps.

[danandchelle001]

there is absolutely nothing on the computer heard drive etc.. we are selling to a member of the fmily and i thought well why not jsut take everything off and then redue the whole thing with the windows so then there is none of our old crap on there ..lol and now i am kicking myslef for telling him to do that .. it is like the windows98 will go completly through then after the end when it restarts it comes back on and tells us explorer error need to reinstall windows ... so .. ok we will try to do that ill have hubby read it when he gets here and have him try to do all that it is just mind boggling because we did that the computer ran great ... i mean great ... well thank you for the help i will try and let you all know if it works..

[S A A B]

thanks

[wannabe1]

Here's a little trick that usually works in your situation...

Boot your machine with a floppy (either Microsoft Boot disk or a Windows 98 Start Up disk) and choose Minimal Boot. When you get the A>prompt, type "fdisk" without the quotes and hit Enter. Choose "Y" (Yes) to the next two questions regarding the NTFS file system, then choose the option to delete the dos partition or any logical partitions and hit Enter. Hit Esc to exit fdisk...Remove the floppy and place your Windows XP cd in the cd-rom drive and hit CTRL-ALT-Delete to restart the machine.

Windows XP will basically walk you through a partitioning and format procedure. It will ask for your 98 disk for verification, but you don't have to install the Windows 98 to do the upgrade to XP...just follow the prompts. It will take a while for the drive to format...be patient. XP should start to install as soon as the formatting is complete.

I have used this procedure a number of times with great success...good luck!

Edited by wannabe1, 17 May 2005 - 08:19 PM.

[danandchelle001]

i tried the way i was told and now it says no fixed disks when i type fdisk....and also now in one of the beginning screens it say primary master none and slave none!! what happened

[Rockster2U]

wannabe1 gave you some good advice but you're going to need to follow some directions. You are bouncing around trying a little bit of this and a little bit of that and what you describe is very predictable, understandable and common. Right now, you are just spinning your wheels ..........

We'll get past all of that if you want to and I'll supplement Wannabe1's instructions but first of all, do you have a Windows 98 boot floppy disk?

Edited by Rockster2U, 18 May 2005 - 09:33 PM.

[nixx]

missing hal.dll (the most common missing dll) on windows startup is the first sign of a hd failure. after awhile, you wont even be able to get info off of it on secondary or slave. get a new hd and put in the xp disk for the cleanest install. then hook up the old hd to the slave and boot. if the old hd doesnt show up, its dead.

Nixx

[wannabe1]

danandchelle001,

Sorry...I've never "lost" a hard drive using the procedure I described and am not sure why yours would have vanished. If your BIOS settings haven't been changed, the drives should have been detected automatically on power up.

Did you use a Windows 98 Startup disk?

If you did and think you may have a faulty disk and have access to a machine with Windows 98 installed, you can create a fresh startup disk as follows...

Click Start

Point to Settings and click Control Panel

Click Add/Remove Programs

Click the Startup Disk tab

Click the Create Disk button

When finished, click OK to exit the Add/Remove Programs Properties dialog box

Note: Whether or not you insert a disk before you start this procedure, you will receive an Insert Disk prompt. Insert a disk if you have not done so already and click OK to continue.

You've never mentioned what kind of machine you are working on, so I can't really help you with the bios settings other than usually it can be accessed by pressing either F1 or the Delete button when the machine is first powered on...it may tell you how on the first screen during post (usually at the bottom of the screen) Make sure that all drives are set to Auto. If they are already set correctly, exit without saving, restart (with the startup disk in the floppy drive) by hitting Ctrl-Alt-Delete, and try the fdisk procedure again.

I used this procedure on a Compaq Presario this afternoon and it worked perfectly (I'm typing this post on that machine now!).

It may take a few posts, but I'd be willing to bet (with all the good advice I've seen on this site) you'll end up with a running machine. Just have to figure out what went haywire...hang in there.

[audioboy]

if you need a W98 boot disk, you can get it here.

do you know how to get into the BIOS on that machine? it wouldnt hurt to make sure the settings are correct for the hard drive. if you dont know how to get into it, when you first boot the machine, there will be a message on the screen saying "press "X" key to enter BIOS" with the X being whatever key you need (usually del, F1, or F2).

nixx, please pay attention to the info in the post. they are working with windows 98 here! have to load that up, so they can use their XP upgrade disc.

[nixx]

ive never heard of 'upgrading to xp' so Im not exactly sure whats goin on. have you been trying to boot 98 from a [bleep] or cd. if wanabee's instructions dont work, its probably a hd problem.

Nixx