[pave the planet]

Hi Everybody--

So, I know, the micro$oft KB says "well, just extract the win.cnf file from the C:\cabs that's probably already on the computer." or, something just as helpful: "pull out your 10 year old Win98 CD and extract them from there"

Great. They're both completely missing; I'm down to a startup disk, a useless IBM proprietary "recovery" CD (recovery of what, I haven't a clue, because it certainly isn't my data), and another computer, with burner.

Any ideas for a source of the file (win98_28.cab?)

Many thanks for your time; I've had great luck with this site before--

paver

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The cabs file may be on the PC, look in the folder c:\windows\options\cabs.
The recovery CD will more than likely recover the computer to it's factory preinstall status. Meaning it'll wipe the hard drive, install Windows, install all the drivers and other pieces of software for you.

Edited by ZEUS_GB, 05 January 2006 - 06:08 AM.

[ZEUS_GB]

The cabs file may be on the PC, look in the folder c:\windows\options\cabs.
The recovery CD will more than likely recover the computer to it's factory preinstall status. Meaning it'll wipe the hard drive, install Windows, install all the drivers and other pieces of software for you.

Edited by ZEUS_GB, 05 January 2006 - 06:08 AM.

[pave the planet]

Thanks Zeus--

c:\windows\options folder isn't there...but it dawned on me--rather than trying to resurrect windows 98 without this file, would you mind showing me how to extract a 3mb file (computer crashed before she'd backed up her Quicken stuff for the year--aack).

If I can get that off, I'm happy to brick or donate the computer (with a reformat).

Thanks,
Paver

[ZEUS_GB]

There are a few ways of getting a copy of the file.

1 - Downloading Knoppix (live linux distribution on CD), burn the image to a CD, boot the effected PC with the Knoppix CD then burn a copy of the file to a burner if the effected PC has one.

2 - Remove the hard drive from the effected PC and link it as a slave to the hard drive on your other computer.

[pave the planet]

Hi Zeus--

Frustratingly, my first attempt was to slave it to another machine...all this crap came after. (No burner on the circa 1999 celeron laptop)

So I guess my question is this: I have a couple USB drive options; an Adaptec ASC-100 with a WD 160 GB hd in it (it was $15 after rebates) and a usb flash/jump drive; could knoppix make these things useful again?

If not, I couldn't slave the hd because the ribbons looked weird: stupid question: the ribbons for 3.5 inch drives are different from those for 2.5 inch drives, no?

OR!: I've got the computer to where i'm in a Win 95 command prompt with no cd or a: help; something that fits on a CD that I could load to make the usbs work again?

Thanks for your time--

P

[ZEUS_GB]

You should be able to link one of the USB drives to the laptop and copy the stuff over via Knoppix.

[pave the planet]

He Zeus--

Took me a while, but I got Knoppix onto a CD and launched it, and all I get is the boot screen from 4.0.2, the penguin, and "Disabling IRQ #15" about nine times (about a minute apart) until it seems to hang looking for the knoppix.sh (purely conjecture). I am able to get it to boot successfully with a failsafe boot, but I'm not sure how to get my data off with no hardware recognition--I can't really find the HD or the USB stuff I want to load the file onto...

in any case, it seems from what little I've been reading that on this computer (IBM i1400 series, 366mhz Celeron, 64-128mb ram...2611-452) that this error is endemic to IBM machines?

see what you think of this: http://www.ece.auckl...top/tp1400.html

I"m afraid it's far beyond my level of comprehension, but might be of use to you?

Thanks for your help,
Ptp