PC Always boots in safe mode

My mate asked me to look at his boss's pc. he runs Win98. and was trying toi install a webcam. He's not very computer literate apparently and had a bit of bother installing it. H eventually managed it when the pc asked for his win98 CD for some files. He couldn't find his original so a friend lent him one but it seems he typed the wrong serial number.
The PC then shut down and would only bot in safe mode.

When it was given to me it was as if there had been a partial install of win98 cos the pc was looking for a serial number. I typed in the correct number and it continued as normal.

The problem is that when shutting down it always gives the message that msgrsv32 has caused problems and to either ignore it or continue. Both options give the same result with the pc shutting down after.
When booting up the machine always starts with the startup menu where you can select safe mode, command prompt etc even though it boots fine otherwise.

Does anyone have any idea what causes these and how to get rid of both of them???

Thanks
David

 

Regarding your msgsrv32 error, this may be of help:

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=262998

To get rid of your boot menu edit your msdos.sys file and add BootMenu=0 to the [Options] section (you may simply need to change the value from 1 to 0.

Here's how to edit the Msdos.sys file:

1.Click Start, point to Find, then click Files Or Folders.

2.In the Named box, type "msdos.sys" (without quotation marks). In the Look In box, click your boot drive (usually drive C, or drive H if drive C is compressed). Click the Find Now button.

3.Right-click the Msdos.sys file and then click Properties.

4.Click the Read-Only and Hidden check boxes to clear them to remove these attributes from the Msdos.sys file, and then click OK.

5.Right-click the Msdos.sys file and then click Open With.

6.In the "Choose the program you want to use" box, click WordPad and then click OK.

7.Make the changes you want to the Msdos.sys file. When you are done, save the file as a text document, and then quit WordPad.

8.Right-click the Msdos.sys file, and then click Properties.

9.Click the Read-Only and Hidden check boxes to select them to set these attributes for the file, and then click OK. Close the Find window.

10.Quit and then restart Windows.

 

I'm not sure about the msgsvr32 problem, but as for the other, go to the start menu, select run, and type msconfig. click on the advanced button (might be on the "Startup" tab, not sure) and make sure that the option regarding the start menu (again, I dopn't have a win98 PC in front of me, so I'm not sure of the exact wording). Also, have a look at what's running at startup there as well. All you really ned there in scanreg, taskmon, systray, and your anti-virus software. Everything else is what was referred to as TSR program,s or "terminate and stay resident" - think of your mother in law overstaying her welcome, and you get the genreal idea.

Disabling the other programs from loading at startup may also solve the msgsvr32 problem. If not, try re-installing the webcam.

 

I have Win95 so I always forget about that one....Yes, under advanced you can uncheck "enable startup menu ".

 

Considering that a windows setup was done, and if there was a AV program installed at the time, I would say that there is a conflict with msgsvr32 and the AV program. This can occur at bootup because of how early in the startup process these files [VXD's, DLL's] are loaded.
I would recommend an uninstall of the AV program, reboot, then reinstall it.

 

Another quick thing to try is to run the system file checker.

There are many different releases of W98 and 2nd ed and if his system has a mix-n-match combo of files... Well it won't like it.