EMM386 won't load on boot

strewth!

Oh dear... a lot of excreta I fear, we may well need the bright guys on this soon. But they will need the information from your autoexec and config

this is not straightforward I'm afraid - we may be in the brown stuff. I rather think we should try two of the autoexecs...

pls get your PC showing A:\> prompt again, and then put the transfer floppy back in it.

Then you need to do

A:\> copy c:autoexec.bak a:autoxbak.txt <enter>
A:\> copy c:autoexec.old a:autoxold.txt <enter>

carefully! - which will also do a rather useful mid-flight rename on the sly.

take the transfer floppy to your friend's PC, and procede as you did for dirlog.txt, with both files.

when you post the results - which are nowhere near as long as for dirlog.txt - please indicate which is which. Although it will be apparrent from their lengths... (I am trying to think ahead here)

I'll post back concerning config.sys. ~10 mins; I fear an attempt to boot the PC "normally" from the hard drive has made life considerably harder - but let me check more carefully first. There will almost certainly be a clue to this in autoxold.txt

GL,HJ

 

Hi,
Here is autoexec.bak

SET BLASTER=A220 I7 D1 H5 P330 T6
SET CTSYN=C:\WINDOWS
C:\PROGRA~1\CREATIVE\SBLIVE\DOSDRV\SBEINIT.COM

Here is autoexec.old



@C:\PROGRA~1\GRISOFT\AVG6\bootup.exe
@rem - By Windows Setup - For 1st Boot - @C:\PROGRA~1\NORTON~1\NAVDX.EXE /Startup
rem - By Windows Setup - C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\MSCDEX.EXE /D:MTMIDE01 /M:10
rem - By Windows Setup - C:\DOS\MSCDEX.EXE /D:MTMIDE01 /M:10
rem ---------------------- MTM ATAPI CD-ROM ----------------------
SET BLASTER=A220 I7 D1 H5 P330 T6
SET CTSYN=C:\WINDOWS
C:\PROGRA~1\CREATIVE\SBLIVE\DOSDRV\SBEINIT.COM
PATH C:\WINDOWS;C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND;C:\DOS;C:\PROGRA~1\GRISOFT\AVG6
REM --- By HiSpeed CD-ROM Drive installation program. 3/25/102 ---
rem - By Windows Setup - C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\MSCDEX.EXE /D:MSCD000
SET TEMP=C:\DOS
SET QTJAVA= "C:\Program Files\JavaSoft\JRE\1.3\lib\ext\QTJava.zip "
SET CLASSPATH=%QTJava%; "C:\Program Files\JavaSoft\JRE\1.3\lib\ext\QTJava.zip "

 

There are way too many entries at the root of C:. Perhaps scandisk for dos is having problems with this. He has a 9x and a 3.1 swapfile there. Along with several files just stored there.
All this needs to cleaned up.
This system clearly has been upgraded all along from 3.1, that swapfile is dated 09-30-93!
In light of this information, I can in all honesty recommend that that computer be fdisked, formatted and then a fresh installation of windows.

 

Hi Mark,
What is fdisk and how do I do it?

 

Hi,
It's 11PM in Reno, Nevada. I'll be back in 8 hours or less.....get some rest.
Thanks for the help and enlightenment.

 

If fdisk were used, your hard drive would have nothing on it. No Windows or anything.
Install after Format
Using Fdisk and Format

 

sorry blakston, this is indeed probably too much of a mess to pick up the pieces. I would like to think about it a bit further - several things just don't add up - but I'm dead tired as it's now 09:00 here

It may well be possible to rescue (at least some, perhaps most of) your user files by putting the HDD into another PC (not as the primary drive though!). As you have indicated they are precious this is what I would advise. But it might not be easy, the drive is still ?misreporting sizes; given the correct tools perhaps?

Surely there would be better chance of doing it like that though, than ever trying to make this one boot-worthy again. I get the impression that the files may be more important (to the user) than the drive...

fdisk is even worse than format! You would have to do it in order to stand any realistic chance of using the drive again; it's the first stage in making a "clean sweep" - you even set up the partitions afresh.

But only after trying to salvage your user files. And then, from what you have told us, it looks like the drive should be checked over very thoroughly (like, surface scan with pattern testing) before being considered trustworthy.

on balance I think it's still worth copying your config.dos file over, its not the same as config.sys but will give information - to do this get to the A:\> prompt from the startup floppy as before; replace the startup floppy with the transfer floppy as before; and then you will need
A:\> copy c:config.dos a:confgdos.txt <enter>
thence to the laptop, thence to the BBS - just in case there was something in it early on.

that there's relics of old Windows isn't really too surprising, some of us only have upgrade disks not full versions... er, don't you have to leave WINA20.386 as well as WIN.COM if coming up from 3.1? rather than 3.11 (and look it's DOS6.20 not 6.22!) Not sure on this but it does ring bells, I certainly remember having some problems trying with only WIN.COM, but what the resolution was? a long time ago...

far better to have a full version W98!

zzzzzzzzz, Hugh.

 

Volume in drive C is MS-DOS_6

Win98 uses DOS 7.x

WAY too many autoexec.and config files . They should be checked for and deleted after each software install that creates one.

WAY, WAY too many ( useless ) Files in the root folder ( C:\ )

If you put 98 on top of 3.1 then it did not go properly. And I see crossed up version of DOS. That may be the reason that EMM386 won't work. ( wrong version ) 95, 98, 98SE have no problem loading EMM386 in the config.sys.

Or did you try for a Dual Boot. If so it went haywire also.

?????? WINDOWS <DIR> 09-16-00 11:36p ???????

How did you install Win98 ?? And did you attempt to put it over Win3.1 ??

I am taking a Wild guess that you booted from the Hard Drive which WILL NOT overwrite all files properly.

Windows does not, never has and never will install correctly if the machine is booted to the HD to do so. Any inuse files ( including the boot sector ) do not get over written properly. Booting from the A:\ drive allows EVERYTHING to get overwritten properly

Either way I am thinking that your BEST thing to do would be a Format and start over.

BillyBob

 

Hi BB and all

having been with this one from the start(!) I'd like to summarise a couple of points out of a long thread, to try to help poor blakston:

from this it appears (rather amazingly!) that EMM386 was OK until quite recently. And the way I read it we aren't (yet) anywhere near finding out what stopped it working.

the poor guy is a musician and composer (from his profile); any advice should (at his own request) be clear and unambiguous if poss.
although it is quite clear from the mess his PC is in that the best course is to fdisk, format, reinstall - I fear that he might well place more importance on salvaging his user files (?his work perhaps) than salvaging the computer per se.

It's quite legit. to consider an OS (any OS) as no more than a platform upon which to run chosen app(s)., the OS becoming just a "tedious bit you have to get through before doing anything with it" - computer-oriented guys and gals can tend to forget this => can mistarget what really matters to people who "use" computers

The next bit makes me worried

on a very sick PC without proper memory manager operating and fundamental errors in the file system? not sure how bad this is in reality, but it doesn't feel good to me.
The PC has had something fairly bad happen before back in August 2002 - but somehow made it through without getting totally kiboshed like this time.

A thought about all those autoexecs and configs: what BB says is true, should have been done at the time. And a halfway decent cleanup job after whatever went wrong in August last year. But could we hang on to them for the moment pls? - at least until we have an idea of what was in them particularly considering what happened to config.sys; copying onto a floppy before jumping in with the rens etc would have been oh so useful, in the light of what's happened. But looking at the dates/times I fear that possibility has gone now, even considering typos and the like.

thus, back to original question: has anyone a clue as to what was presumably running in protected mode at the point when EMM386 attempted to load? Get a handle on this, and we find the prime mover...
From the size of the partitions (~15GB) can ?rule out BIOS translators, check me please? which doesn't leave a lot of options? as soon as one starts to consider the OS running - or trying to - it all gets complicated. But concentrate instead on what's between power on and EMM386 going in... and something perhaps in the middle?

phew, one tired Hugh (kept going all night trying to get that file list to our screens, it didn't come easy - pls remember that blakston isn't into the intricacies of W98, see quote about notepad above) gotta do some work now but will check back later.
Best Wishes all, HJ

 

Unless there is something that I am not aware of and EMM386 is in the config.sys there is no protected mode at that time. The Autoexec and Config are loaded as the last item of business just before Windows is even thought of.

Also I believe HIMEM.SYS must also be loaded before EMM386 will load.

I could be wrong but I have strong feeling that versions of DOS have been crossed up. And if that does happen all sorts of hell can break loose.

WINDOWS <DIR> 09-16-00 11:36p

DOS <DIR> 09-15-00 11:54p

All things being equal and proper and a Dual Boot was not attempted the Windows folder should reflect the Date of the 98 install.

And if 98 is in a separate folder I believe it should show up in a DIR command. Which I do not see in the list provided byt blakston6286.

BTW. Which version of 98 is being used. 98FE , 98FE with Svc Pack or 98 SE ? They are all different.

BillyBob

 

Anything ( HIMEM, EMM386 etc. ) should come from the [ Windows folder ]\Command folder.

BTW. Unless I missed it I have not seen a printout if the
Config.sys.

Right now the autoexec,bat is of no concern. The config.sys is loaded first and that is where the problem lies.

BB

 

BB and all

from my summary above

it was there until 00:45 last night... and then...

the first ren attempt does seem to have targetted autoexec.bat (check the time/date on the file list), so if that worked perhaps config.sys got done as well...

then (I assume) autoexec.bat and config.sys may have been restored, more likely rebuilt, from something.

the second ren attempt however... and there is no CONFIG.OLD or CONFIG.BAK, note. That's why I want to salvage CONFIG.DOS, next best thing

autoexec.bak has probably been "rebuilt" I feel?

you have to look quite carefully at the time trail here. Thank goodness we have the times and dates of the files as they are.

and perhaps also remember that even though the installation on W98 was an awful mess, and there's surely reason to believe a version conflict might occur: this machine was working until a few days ago, using HIMEM and EMM386 relatively normally. Just from the logic of it.

and then something happened, which I fear has been obscured and exacerbated by "fixit" software (prob including W98 returning to previous state) "fixing it" good and proper...

Good Luck, HJ

**edit I'm going to recheck working along the order of events, slowly and hopefully thoroughly; but not for a few hours yet, still busy (gotta work sometimes!).

 

This may be a LLOONNGGG & wild shot it the dark But;

Did you by any wild stretch of my imagination have the system restarted into the MS DOS Mode ( from the Windows shutdown memu ) and then had to either reset or Cntrl-Alt-Del to get out of it.

I do not mean the DOS Prompt.

That ( so I found out ) will ( or at least may ) cause all kinds of problems on the DOS side. And EMM386 is deffinetly in the DOS side of course.

In fact it stopped me from getting into Win98 at all.

Especially if it switched Config.sys and Autoexec,bat in the process of going into the MS DOS Mode.

BillyBob

 

Hello BillyBob and Hugh,
I read your current comms.
A little bit of missing history may shed some lite.

Yes ,,,,last year I did get the Bugbear Virus as well as the Klez and Nimda? None of these viruses crippled my computer enough to n ot be able to loginto BBS and get the needed help.

A few weeks ago I got an agravating Email claiming someone charged something to my account that was not authorized. When I opened this Email it was not very informative and appeared to have been a ruse. Which is when all the trouble started.

When I ran the spybot it showed Alexa as an unwanted entry. So I deleted it I ran the Grisoft and it found a virus so i deleted it. Then I ran Adware and then Registry Cleaner JV1. An un usual thig happened when I ran the Registry Cleaner.
I clicked on tools and clicked on Do Them All as I always have. 4 Unnecessary Directory listings were brought up and I was instructed to delete them.
I deleted them and ran the Do Them All again just to doublr check.
Well......the wxact same registry Directories reappeared on the list. I deleted them again and did Do Them All once more and Yes they reappeared. That's when I decided I was over my head.
EMM386 had not loaded weeks ago but I went and reloaded drivers at my Nvidia and Creative websites and it started loading again.
Yesterday......when I scandiscked in microsoft ScanDisk that appears when I try to reinstall Windows. I got this message during the Scan.
"Scandisk detected an invalid long filename entry on this drive but was unable to fixit. To fix this problem run ScanDisk for Windows. I clicked OK and the Scandisk continued.
At one point I got a message "ScanDisk has foundlost clustersthat were probablt directories at one time. These lost directories have been restored scandisk checking from the beginning "
At this point the directories you see listed in my dir/p list 00001 to 165 were from Scandisk trying to delete and renamea directory that was named Black Plane, which I am certain was a virus that hid itself on my computer.
Scandisk never deleted these directories that were written with ALIEN type icons it said it did but just renamed them and grew them up to 165.
I feel THIS is my problem.
Is there a command i can use to delete certain things in my directories, i know which ones don't belong there.

 

Hi blakston, BB and all

blakston: thanks for the history this sheds quite a bit of light! - only popping in, work going OTT, back later..

are you up to copying the CONFIG.DOS file for us pls? - same lark as with the others, instruction in my post above timed 09:04H

it might have a hint...

how much user files do you have pls estimate (MB/GB)? and could you let us know how much importance to place on attempting to salvage them if W98 cannot be fixed?

another useful one: BB's query about which version of windows98 you had on the machine...

best wishes & good luck, back later, HJ

 

Hi,
I am running Windows 98SE. I do have the full installation disc.
I have to go back to the previous pages to follow instructions and copy the Config Dos.I will post it next.
It is interesting you mentioned the fixit restoring the problem. Everytime I did a fixit I was informed on boot up that my current info was bad and the computer was going to restore a former configuration. I had no choice in the matter it simply did it. So it kept bringing back the dead and defeating my purpose. No doubt a fail safe entered by the program that was corrupting my system.

 

Sorry,,,,,I need instructions on the exact wording to type to obtain the config DOS. I just don' have a clue from reading the the other autoexec instructions

 

I copied this from the other post and made the changes needed.

"pls get your PC showing A:\> prompt again, and then put the transfer floppy back in it.

Then you need to do

A:\> copy c:config.dos a:config.txt <enter> "

 

Well,,,,,,,,now I have a problem with my friends computer.

I did the file copy succesfully on a new floppy.
I went to My Computer, on my friends computer, as I did wth the other files.
When I clicked on Drive A this message appeared.
"A:\ is not accessible. The device is not ready. "
Did I mess up my friends computer with the last transfer? It worked fine for those

 

blakston6286,
I really think your hard drive may be failing. A few things come to mind on this. For one, the possible age of the drive, your WinA20.386 file is dated 09-30-93, ten years ago that file was installed as part of Windows 3.x and MSDos. Another is the existence of the C:\Dos folder, and the file Command.Dos with a 93 date, which I believe is an old version of Command.Com
Then there is the Invalid Long Filename, which is recommended to fix using Windows Scandisk. Here is where I am assuming things. This hard drive is less than 2 gb and you have a FAT16 file system. Now why is this important along with the invalid name. I am betting the invalid filename actually exists in Track 0 of the drive [you never said if scandisk gave a location]. This is where the FAT [File Allocation Table] file exists on a FAT16 file system drive. If the FAT file location is not working right, files and folders will not be found and/or seemingly corrupted. This FAT file has the location of every file and folder stored on the drive, it is so important you have two of them, one as a backup. Of course, both exist at Track 0. A FAT32 drive would not have this problem, as the FAT files for that are spread across the drive.
This is from experience of such a message with another drive I was working on years ago. Fdisking and formatting was useless. While I could create a partition and it did take a while, formatting did no good as it could not create a FAT file. That drive was trashed, along with everything on it.
Now, all those files and folders at the root of C:\ is creating havoc with a FAT16 system. If you just want to delete them, here are the commands to do that.
Boot with the start floppy and type in these commands exactly;
This is assuming you are looking at A:> when doing this.
c:
cd\
del file*.txt << This command deletes all the filexxxx.txt files in one swoop. You can put in a filename instead of file*.txt to delete one at a time, for example, del winzip.log. Be very careful with the * , as it is a wildcard.
deltree c:\dir00001 << Press Y that you want to delete. Make sure of spelling. For the rest, change the 00001 to whichever is next, such as c:\dir00002 The Deltree command deletes directories or folders and everything in them, if you put in deltree c:\instal~1, that directory would be gone
Myself, I wouldn't bother deleting, I would hook that drive into another computer, and copy everything off of it as soon as possible.
This would bring another problem to you, putting in a new hard drive. Your BIOS [main computer board for you] may not support a hard drive larger than 8 to 10 gb, and the new ones are a minimum of 30gb. While we could walk you through putting one in, are you sure you are up to this? This would involve you possibly flashing the BIOS, one wrong thing done doing this and the computer is a big paper weight. The flashing software must be exactly for your BIOS, not almost. This would involve you identifying it positively.
Or installing a drive overlay, which would fool the BIOS into thinking the drive is smaller than what it is and make it work. Again, not something I think you are up to do.

These registry entries are being put back by another program that was running. The registry cleaner targets them as errors as they seem to point to nothing, such as a non existant folder, or an incomplete file association with a program, such as when you double click a file and the appropiate program opens it. Or another way, you have two programs that will open the same type of file, but only one of them actually opens it when double clicked. At another point you use the other program, but open the program then open the file with that program, this second program checks the registry and sees something is missing and puts it back.
BTW, a look at the SCANDISK.LOG would help
copy c:\scandisk.log a:\scandisk.txt
Good luck to you!

Edit: Try another floppy, they are fickle and can go bad in a second.