Unable to boot up win98 se...

Turned my pc on this morning and was greeted with:

UNABLE TO OPEN WINDOWS AS
VFAT
HIMEM.SYS
DBLBUFF.SYS
IFSHLP.SYS
FILES CORRUPT OR MISSING.
(May not be exact wording but close.)

Any help appreciated...

 

Hello, and welcome to the boards.
Those are some important files to be suddenly come up missing. As to why, I could take 2 quesses. One, a virus delivered it's payload. Two, your hard drive went south a bit. I am not at your computer, so I cannot tell if this is the case.
You may have more files than that missing. You could try installing windows on top of itself.
Go to Bootdisk's, and download the file for 98SE. Double click that file with a floppy in the drive, it will create a bootup floppy. After you make the floppy, slide the little tab so that you can see through both holes. This write protects the disk.
Boot the computer with the floppy, choose CD Rom support. When done there will be a message telling you what the drive letter for your CD will be. Note, it will not be the usual letter. Use this letter in place of the X below.
When you are at the A:\> prompt, type in these commands, pressing Enter at the end of each line.
scandisk /surface
If all turns out well, do these commands.
sys a: c:
fdisk /mbr
Insert Win CD into drive.
X:\win98\setup
If, for some reason setup stops and says there is already an operating system, do this command at the prompt and restart setup.
ren c:\windows\win.com win.old

 

thanks

Thanks for replying so quickly, I will get started right away.

I too suspected a virus so ran AVG recovery disk but it detected nothing...

catch you tomorrow.

 

Plan B

I did all that was sugested. I reinstalled win98 and when it got to the reboot stage the exact same message was there!
The surface scan took hours but reported no problems.

what's plan B...

 

When booting DIRECTLY from a POWER OFF state to the floppy the above should not be neccessary. The boot floppy should not even know there is an existing OS. That is the reason for booting directly to the floppy from a power off state.

Booting any other way will not allow Windows to overwrite things properly.

If you allow the machine to go to the HD first then troubles can arise.

Plus during the install there should be a choice to make a boot floppy. This will work better than a downloaded one as it will be geared to the specific machine.

aprilmay

When you did the install did you make sure that Windows went back into the EXISTING Window folder ?

If during the install any other choice than C:\Windows was shown then something is wrong. When booting to the floppy C:\Windows is the default. At least I have never seen anything else.

Letting the machine go to the HD first may result in Windows going into C:\Windows.000. This is not what you want.

If the machine did not go directly to the flopy from a powere off then you may need to check out the Boot sequence in the BIOS so the it does.

BillyBob

 

OOPS !!! I forget something.

Are we discussing a home built machine or an OEM ( HP. DELL ) machine ?

That could make a difference.

BillyBob

 

Thoughts.

UNABLE TO OPEN WINDOWS AS
VFAT
HIMEM.SYS
DBLBUFF.SYS
IFSHLP.SYS
FILES CORRUPT OR MISSING.
(May not be exact wording but close.)

Someone can help me out here in case I am wrong but all of the files listed above ( except maybe VFAT ) are DOS files loading from config.sys.

If they are then an over top reinstall MAY NOT work correctly. As it may continue to use them.

Windows itself doe not need them. The DOS side of Windows does.

You might want to boot to the floppy and rename the CONFIG.SYS to CONFIG.OLD.

And I have never seen VFAT in the config.sys so I have no idea what it is.

BillyBob

 

I did 3 installs.... the first time I made a new directory
the 2nd.... went into the new directory
the 3rd install went into the original directory.

I did not make a floppy bootdisk, I used a downloaded one.
And the machine went straight to Floppy from power off.

I had the machine built at a reputable shop using brands and components I asked for eg: hard drive, cpu and mother board

is not the first message I get as I first quoted, I recieve that when trying to do safe mode.
The first error message is "VFAT Device Initialization Failed" SORRY!

Sorry I have no idea how to do this... (blonde)

Thank you very much for taking the time to help me!

 

That is good to read.

Question. Do you run any DOS programs at all. If not then the config.sys is not even needed.

What you can try is.

Boot directly to the Startup Disk ( from power off state )

Try typing DEL C:\config.sys

or

Type REN C:\CONFIG.SYS CONFIG.OLD. I belive that command is correct. ( it has been a LLLOOONNNGGG time )

This should at least get rid of the errors.

Then I would suggest that you delete the NEW Windows folder.

DEL C:\name of new folder should do it.

Then boot to the floppy again and Windows should go into the existing Windows folder which is be default C:\Windows.

BillyBob

 

In order to use the rename and delete command after booting to the floppy you may need to type;

CD C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND

or

C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\DEL C:\CONFIG.SYS

It may even be DELTREE C:\CONFIG.SYS.

Yes it is DELTREE C:\CONFIG.SYS

I keep forgetting that my 98 Startup Disk is highly modified and has a LOT more on it than the normall SUD does.

BillyBob

 

No need to use DELTREE as this is used to delete folders and subdirectories. For deleting single files just DEL (along with the file name) will do the trick.

You have the rename command correct, good memory...

 

"VFAT Device Initialization Failed "
This could be caused by a few things.
You have installed windows a couple of times, hopefully it is now in the C:\Windows folder now. Look for a file named Winboot.Ini, located at C:\, if there rename or delete it. This file can be left behind during an incomplete installation.
deltree c:\winboot.ini
Your Msdos.Sys file may have the wrong windows PATH in it. I am assuming all you can get is the command prompt. Do these commands.
attrib -r -h -s c:\msdos.sys
edit c:\msdos.sys
You will now have a dos based text editor running, with the contents of Msdos.Sys there. It will be sort of divided into sections. One section should look just like this, nothing else should be there.
[Paths]
WinDir=C:\WINDOWS
WinBootDir=C:\WINDOWS
HostWinBootDrv=C
If not, edit it so that it is.
The next section will have more, but make sure this is there.
[Options]
BootGUI=1
Do not worry about lines filled with X's.

To save while in this Edit program, press and hold ALT, then press on F while holding the ALT key, the file menu will open. Use the arrow key to highlight Save then press Enter. Do the same to get to the Exit command.

Now use the File Menu to open this file "C:\Windows\System.Ini'. Scroll down to the section [Vcache], if you see this line;
maxfilecache=4096
Delete the entire line. It may not be there at all, just covering some bases here.
Like BillyBob said, you really do not need the Config.sys and Autoexec.Bat file. It is possible the current Config.Sys has a line pointing to the wrong or nonexistant Ifshlp.Sys file, if you followed his advice to delete or rename the Config.Sys file, this is eliminated as the problem.

 

Sorry for not getting back sooner.

I have tried all of the above with out any luck, things are still the same. I am stating to belive it may be the Hard drive or motherboard... but next move I suppose would be to reformat
So 3 questions come to mind

1, Is there away to test the MOTHERBOARD to confirm it has problems or died.

2. Same for the HARD DRIVE any test to confirm.

3. Is there away to SAVE all my DATA.

 

I would test the hard drive first. Each drive manufacturer has a set of diagnostic software you can download. These files when doubleclicked creates a diagnostic floppy that is bootable by itself.
You can use the scandisk /surface command at the prompt, using the 98 boot floppy, and it will check for bad sectors.

You can copy the files from the ailing drive by installing it as a Slave drive in another computer.

If your motherboard died completely, it would not try to load an operating system or windows.

 

Thank You all!

Just want to update on things. I end up putting the pc into the repair shop and for $55au they saved my data then reformmatted and reinstalled windows, I feel that it was a good bargin as I could have done the reformatt but not the backup of all my data and that was worth $55 LOl.
Thank you to anyone who helped out.
(The repair shop just said windows was corrupt)

 

Worth while prog

Mark, I wonder if you would be interested in adding this to your downloads, PeerGuardian, I run it and it is amazing how many advertising companies it blocks, among others.
PeerGuardian
Just a thought!