EMM386 won't load on boot

Hi

Kevin - why on earth did you change the instructions? OK you will get the file across but the midflight rename was not unintentional...

markp62, he has partitions ~15GB and can boot from W98 startup floppy => no BIOS kludge, it would appear

Regards, HJ

 

Was there a disk in the floppy drive?

If yes try removing it and putting it back in, once in a great while they don't seat quite right. Or it could be that the floppy disk died, try another.

Hugh

Sorry, I didn't change the inflight change, I just changed the name of the file he was trying to copy. The only reason I even got into this was that you were offline and I thought I'd give a gentle prod in the right direction until you got back.

 

Hi Mark,
My Hard drive is an IBM 46 gigabyte. I have fat 32. I have 384 RAM. AMD Athlon 900 Thunderbird processor. ASUS V7 Socket A Mother board.

I have no idea where the 1993 files came from (maybe it was deposited from a program within a virus) because this computer was built new in the year 2000.

Maybe the DOS file is from 1993. The guy that built this computer provided the DOS install.

The invalid long file name was in WINDOWS, I assume that is why the message said to run Scandisk i Windows.
I donot know how to run ScanDisk in Windows.

 

Kevin no worries and thanks for looking in

just a bit worried that we'll "too many cooks "; like last time lost the CONFIG.SYS which has proved a bit unfortunate!

sorry for being away gotta work sometimes

a couple of ideas: about putting another HDD into the machine? it would need to be ~ the same size

I have no experience of this motherboard but: hoping it has 2xIDE

if clean install of W98 made onto the new HDD = primary IDE master; CDROM = primary IDE slave

then when windows stable - don't need the internet stuff and associated "power" tools but a decent real-time file virus checker would be needed notalot else though

patching the old HDD onto secondary IDE: view it using the new install of windows => best way to ship the user files over?

best wishes all - Hi blakston - HJ

 

markp62

I sort of agree with you.

There are WAY too many OUTDATED files showing up.

And I also strongly believe that more than one version of DOS has become crossed up. That is why I asked about maybe being in the MS DOS Mode and had to get out of it using other than " EXIT "

I will be darned if I can find it again and I do not recall seing it before. But you mentioned something about drive size being 2gig.

That brings up another possibility. No matter what the drive size

If the drive is overloaded it will TRASH itself. And the more it is messed with the worse it can get.

2gig is no where near large enough for 98SE and much other stuff.

BillyBob

 

is 46GB split into three blakston just said so; and it is FAT32.

==

I'm not sure the invalid long file names matter that much.
in general it doesn't matter two hoots if a file cannot be opened in MSDOS mode, unless you want to use old DOS type prog to open it!

just means it is more than 66 char i think

also, is this not the thing which is preventing us fix this?

need to know:

running the scandisk that works on the text screen; when it says you have to use scandisk for windows; is there any other sort of error which it cannot fix?

(perhaps combination error of trashed file or FAT entry on top of long file name might be a hassle)

can put switches on to stop it leaving the muck. If files are shredded anyways they are no good.

thoughts pls? I can see a solution along these lines.

Best Wishes, Hugh

 

Hi Hugh, Hi Billy Bob,
My Hard Drive is 46 gigabytes partitoned into 3 sectionsapproximately 15 gigabytes. Drive D and Drive E are empty and clean.
Can I do the file transfer like I would to a secondary Drive then Reformat Drive C with a real good Virus Scan program,,,,delete the directories and files I know are bad and Scan all others before i bring them back into Drive C?

 

yo blakston you hit gold! I am now almost sure we can do this but care is needed

from the date of the earlier August2002 files they can be deleted

if u look at scandisk for windows it gives you the option to delete 'em anyway; also I never got anything useful out of them...

the later ones are in folders this needs more care but

ideally: i have a utility (runs from bootable floppy) that can copy one partition to another. this would be best

we need to do this from the DOS prompt; xcopy no good will not copy hidden or system files

we have to shunt everything up a partition

omigod if only we had got a bit more information before windows stopped working you could have done it with windows explorer

doh!

more soon...

 

Hi Hugh,
Yeah I'm game,,,,,,not afraid of hard work and all I need is step by step explicit instructions.

By the way any idea why my friends floppy A doesn't work today
any remedies to try? Should I reboot the computer or scan for a virus ??????

 

a couple of checks first. I would like to be more certain that the HDD itself is not faulty... also that we can use the top two partitions

blakston pls try:

use startup floppy from power on (you guessed!) you don't need the floppy drive of the laptop for this

can you get to the A:> prompt still, pls? I want you to check out the upper partitions, see if they are OK

also:

v. important: is your windows98 cd an upgrade disk or the whole works, pls?

going offline to check the relevant command (carefully) - quick dummy run ~5mins

BFN, HJ

 

Hi Hugh,
My Windows 98SE is the fullVersion....not for upgrading it says it is for distribution with a new PC....and is For PC's without Windows.

I currently have my PC booted and A:\> is showing awaiting further instructions.

 

Here is an idea that may find the Invalid Long File name. Do this command at the prompt, making sure you are at C:\, not C:\Windows, well you will be there anyway doing these commands;

c:
cd\
dir /s /p ????????????????*.*

What this will do is find every filename with 16 or more charactors, there must be 16 ?'s. This will list files and folders. As they are listed, the short dos filename will be on the left, the windows long filename on the right, press Enter to keep scrolling a page on the screen at a time.
What you need to do is look for a really long name, and post both the short name [like this, liketh~1] and the long filename back here. The really long name will be obvious as it will wrap to the next line.
Do not attempt to delete or rename until one of us can get a look at the name(s), if found using this method.

The reason scandisk for dos cannot do anything about a long filemname is that dos cannot really handle it, though my command above will expose them.

 

Hi mark,
I will follow your instructions and hand write the file names that are long and retype them on my next Post.




I rebooted my friends computer and got the floppy A Drive to open the Config.Dos
So I copied it and am pasting it following this message. I hope it helps in some way.

Here is Config.DOS

DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\setver.exe
DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\HIMEM.SYS
DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\EMM386.EXE
DOS=HIGH
rem ---------------------- MTM ATAPI CD-ROM ----------------------
[COMMON]
LASTDRIVE=M
REM device = c:\hxcd-rom\cdrom.sys /d:mscd000
DEVICE = C:\HXCD-ROM\CDROM.SYS /D:MSCD000
REM --- By HiSpeed CD-ROM Drive installation program. 3/25/102 ---

 

OK......
first I typed C: and pressed enter.
C:\> appeared
Next I typed cd\ and pressed enter and C:\ > appeared again
Next I typed dir/s/p????????????????*.* and pressed enter.
this message appeared "Invalid switch - ????????????????*.*

Next I typed cd\dir/s/p ????????????????*.*
This message appeared " Too many parameters - /S


What did I do wrong????

 

hi sorry for the delay

markp it's including path also not just filename it's well-formed-path limited also (contracted name versions as you say with the ~) and you need /a as well else it will miss hidden files

blakston:
I'm assuming that you have chosen option 2 like last night, ie start without CDROM support

next bit to confirm this and check the RAMDRIVE is OK as F:

this time you need to be at the A:\> prompt though: so if you are seeing C:\> (or anything else starting with C) do this first

((anything) below can be any letters symbols or nothing at all - these commands will get it back to where you need to be)

C:\(anything)> a: <enter>

A:\(anything)> cd \ <enter>

go from here
A:\> dir f:\scandisk.exe <enter>

(above line also edited 'coz it looked like there was a space where there should not have been. old version works also. this is clearer)

if all is well you will see that SCANDISK.EXE is alive and where I think it is

if not stop here and tell me what you have

if OK procede thus:

A:\> f:\scandisk d: /surface <enter>

which should start the check of your d: partition (no CDROM, remember) and then surface scan it for defects

please be really careful with the spaces!

GL, HJ

 

Hugh I am lost,
I have rebooted and brought up A:\>
Do leave the starup floppy in for your instructions or take it out?

 

hi again

blakston there have to be spaces between some of the items on these command lines

it's not easy to see in this font. But one way you might do it:

if you get a blank Notepad up and running
Start>Programs>Accessories>Notepad

then: if you cursor over a bit of text on the BBS (like, one of these command lines) so it gets highlighted: do <Ctrl>C

switch to notepad and do <Ctrl>V

it should paste it into notepad. The notepad font is a monospace font and the gaps come out far easier to see

GL, HJ

 

Why are you messing with the config.dos ?

It is not the one that is used when the machine boots.

It may only be used when booting into the MS DOS MODE when in Windows. And then only if told to.

If the EMM386 error is actually coming up at boot up of the machine then you want to examine the one that is actually used at that time. And that is the config.sys and autoexec.bat. Not the ones with the .DOS extention.

If the error is coming up when going to the DOS mode from Windows then it may be a different story.

IF you can actully get into Windows then do a Start~run~sysedit and that will give you the proper files to work with.

If you can not get into Windows then get to either and A: or C: prompt and type EDIT C:\config,sys. That is the file you want to look at.

BillyBob

 

you should leave the startup floppy in

if in any doubt, just hit CtrlAltDel to restart and choose option 2 for "no CD support "

then, look back to the instructions - I am about to edit in the words:go from here

coz you can if you are doing it straight from the restart

the other bit was in case you had been doing the other stuff and got left at the wrong prompt.

GL, HJ

 

BB
mainly 'coz a bit of untimely ren-ning followed by what came next blew out our chances of anything better; like I said you have to look at the time trail. We had the real thing up until the 00:45 post. I don't think we got it any more. I wish I was wrong

*edit*
there's a lot of doubt as to what really happened, it rather depends upon what folder things were happening in. I would have guessed that both got missed (post back on p2 ish) but from the date/time probably autoexec.bat did get renamed (I have to allow for the time zone here but I think it adds up.

what on earth happened to config.sys is a bit of a mystery, if anyone can think of a salvage scheme then it would be oh so useful - there's ?are they for a graphics card?

when this little bout of hecticness is over I was going to suggest trying to rescue all the autoexec and config files and any typo'ed renames (if we are lucky enough to find such I see none at the moment, again needs checking)

the choices of OLD and BAK may have been unfortunate also. there's plenty of stuff there that would recognise them...
halfway behind my copying over to file of different name also makes it clearer for people who haven't read the whole thread that these did not originate as straight copies

I want to check the time trail again myself - but suspect CONFIG got "eaten" after the first ren - was there not an abortive relaunch attempt of windows? including (presumably) a misfire at it trying to mend itself. must check this

phew, Hugh