Windows 98 - Unable to Launch

Hi,
After using my Sony notebook (VAIO PVG 748) for a couple of years without any incident, I had my first Windows 98 crash yesterday. Windows 98 failed to launch even in Safe Mode. The launch ends with C prompt. The message I received was as follows:
"Unable to control A20 line!
XMS Driver not installed "
I can boot at A. Short of reformatting and restoring rather older backup do I have any other choice? Please help. Thank you.
kjabal

 

Take a look here and see if this might help.

 

Thank you very much KevonSaul. I shall try your solution and get back to you if I do not succeed. Best regards.
kjabal

 

Unable to launch Windows 98 even in Safe Mode

Hi,
I am back after trying the suggestions in the 'link'. None of them solved my problem. Some of the switches between /M:1 to /M:17 initiated hard drive scan in Safe Mode and a few gave the messages that some of my files had wrong dates and wrong date stamps, and that the Boot record was not correct and would give wrong information about the available space on the hard drive. Since I did not consider these errors to be relevant to my problem I ignored all of them, However, I did not succeed in launching Windows 98 SE even in Safe Mode. I kept on receiving "HIMEM.SYS is missing. Please check that the file exists in Windows directory." I checked and it did exist. I do not seem to go past the C prompt. Is there anything else that I should try? Thanks,
kjabal

 

Well, I came across a rather odd reply to something similar...maybe worth checking out?

Blatantly ripped from here.

 

Himem.sys file missing-Unable to launch Windows 98

Hi Daizy,

I thank you very much for your kind effort to help me out of my problem. As I had mentioned earlier mine is a Sony notebook computer and the mouse pad and the keyboard seem to be built in or at least I do not have the knowledge to tinker with them. Hence I am unable to see if these have the roots of my problem. However, I do sincerely thank you for the time you took to dig through the information that was available some years ago!

Sincerely,
kjabal

 

Are you able to plug in a keyboard or mouse anywhere?

 

Perhaps himem.sys is corrupt. You could try booting from a win98 boot disk and copying the himem.sys file off the floppy to your hard drive. At the a prompt type the following line.

copy himem.sys c:\windows

Note the spaces in the line.

 

Unable to launch Windows 98 - himem.sys mising

Hi Daizy and Zander,

Many thanks to both of you for your kind help. I had tried to replace the himem.sys file in the windows directory earlier without any luck, and have since tried to launch Windows connecting an external keyboard and an external mouse but the notebook would not budge. Finally I bit the bullet and reformatted the hard drive and then restored an earlier backup to get back on track. However, I did manage to boot before at A: with the Windows 98 SE emergency startup diskette and was able to copy My Documents folder to a partition and thus was able to recover all my data. Thank you again for all your help and sincere interest.

kjabal.