EMM386 won't load on boot

never mind this one

 

Hugh,
Everything started OK. My computer is now scanning Drive D with a surface scan.
The graphic is showing 8 used clusters at the beginning of the Drive. Right after the first 8 used clusters is a lightly shaded cluster section. The legend on the side says this is a 'some used clusters'.

The rest of the clusters are mostly dark indicating unused clusters.
However the 43rd cluster is lightly shaded indicating a 'Some used cluster'.

At the very end of the drive is 2 lightly shaded, 'some used clusters and one used cluster at the Very end of the drive.
Is this normal or could they be something I need to eliminate?
So far it is slow going only 110 clusters out of 2,906 have been scanned so I am thinking it will be at least 20 minutes till the scan is done.

 

Sounds normal to me.

 

Mark I will do the dir/ s/ p/ a????????????????*.* as soon as this Drive D is done Scandisking. About 20 minutes.

 

That is;
dir /s /p /a ????????????????*.*
The spacing and the syntax must be as above.

 

blakston well done keep it going; we'll investigate what's there later: when you've done with a shred of luck you should get back to A:\>

if this is so the next thing is to prove the next partition with a stunningly similar command line

(hint: try pressing F3 at this point! then backspace if it's given you your last command back)

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

let me know?

GL, HJ

edit: it does take a while, but part of what we get is that it is checking that the whole of the partition doesn't have bad bits, it's got to test a lot of disk

umm: there will probably be things like ffastrun.ffa at a guess and maybe a desktop.ini and folder.htt perhaps? but these don't matter, we'll be formatting them out of existence (from the floppy!) next. good idea to know we can trust the surface first though...

the only thing files which would matter are if you've put any there on purpose maybe a while ago

but if any doubt can just do a dir /a /s that sort of thing will show if files are there even if it won't show the full names

 

Mark let me make certain i got this right.

dir(space)/s(space)/p(space)/a(space)????????????????*.*
Then I click ENTER and see what happens.

 

Hugh,
If I press f3 at the end of the scandisk of Drive D what should I see?
At present time Scandisk is 40% done with Drive D.

 

Yes, I am hoping it will do some good. Remember every file will have two names listed. One is short and will have a ~ followed by a number and will be listed on the left side of screen, the long filename will be listed on the right side of the screen. Both names will be on the same line, however, really long names will wrap to the next line. Those are the ones that need looking at.
The short name should work in this case, but it wouldn't be a bad idea to get them both

 

F3 just gives you back what you last typed - not perfect but it saves a bit of typing. HJ

 

Mark,
OK as soon as I finish scandisk on Drive D I will follw your instructions . Then write down all the long file names and type them in a post. Is that OK?

 

mark if it's from the startup floppy it doesn't !!! - i only just found this out - it might if its SE perhaps, my W98 is not - maybe you could check perhaps??

**edit** DOH idiot HJ we know the answer to this already as we have seen it when blakston posted the dirlog. no long file names. and i went and typed it next. strewth i am stupid sometimes. my only excuse is that i'm working a lot of this out on-the-fly **ends**

I was wondering why no long filenames when blakston posted the dirlog.txt you see... I'd got them when I posted the coloured list - but then I'd just raised the prompt from the Start menu

so I tried it - only briefly - gotta be so careful, all these command prompts (run, start>programs>msdos prompt, restart in msdos mode) they all work a bit different

why no long filenames? dunno.

only got so far: that the way blakston's got it running the DIRCMD variable is set - it's just something like /O:N - took out DIRCMD (or at least set it to null string, like you'd do to get rid of a path) - still no long filenames??? Hmmmm.

there's a /v switch for verbose - but still no long filenames - you get two dates though

unless there's another switch I've missed? think i went through them all E&OE

best wishes, HJ

(pesky fingers i keep typing u instead of i)

 

Good luck!

 

Hugh,
What did you say in the last Post?
Is there more info I can give you that would make it easier to figure things out?

By the way....exactly what did the scandisc mean when it said to scandisc Windows? How is that different from what I was doing.

Also if you will notice the directories listed,,,, starting at 00001 and going up to 000165,,,, were all created yesterday. That is because these were the directories that my computer decided were hidden at the end of my C Drive and just restored them without giving me a chance to say NO. They originally started as a handfull of directories. That looked normal but had about 15 000001 directories all with small differences in the names of each.
Each numbered sequence had about 10 or 15 directories listed under that particular #. For instance 000002 had many directories listed. So did 000003 and so on.
Is there a chance that this was originally ONE directory but as scandisc deleted it and renamed it a new one was created until 165 directories all corrupt were created?
Anyway,,,,, I know for certain all those directories can be killed off.

 

a thought about hard drives - although what BB says about 2GB being small for W98 is true it's for a real-world W98; but we don't need that for this

if yuo could get hold of 800MB it would be overkill - I only had 700MB (ok FE) when I started with this PC and we managed to get about 150MB of mp3's before I ran out of room!

we only need a very barebones install to shunt the files over: use Windows Explorer will do it fine, carts hidden files over and preserves folder structure

just as an idea:
if u can get old of a spare drive - only borrow for a week but you would need to format it
OK so booting fom floppy!
(BB is very correct in his remarks above re: how not to put windows on) you would start with CD ROM support (we will confirm this first! - ie your startup floppy CD support gets proved first...)
- put in W98 CD - can fire off setup from the command prompt will be something like A:\> e:\setup i think, as the ramdrive will be D
put minimal W98.
now you may need to put ISP stuff on to get hold of a virus buster, nothing fancy, but willl need to be right up to date with signatures
OK. If you have two IDE connectors replug the old drive into the secondary IDE;
if not ditch the CDROM for the moment, jumper the old drive as slave, plug as CD used to be
now virus bust the whole old drive, all 3 parts, why not...
when safe / disinfected,
use windows explorer. shunt all your stuff up to a higher partition
format the bottom partition (which will soon be your new C
unplug everything and configure your old drive where it used to be
using startup floppy and W98CD, put windows on afresh. not limited for space now you can bung on the whole works

as one way round it all - it looks like a lot of work but it will be safe; you will salvage all which can be salvaged; and windows explorer is a really good tool for getting the stuff up to a higher partition. You can even pick and choose as you are doing it, leave the mess behind

as the old drive will be not plugged in as you put windows onto the new small one, there's no chance of windows trying to copy an older setup. Or any possibilties of virus trouble. Until you have the virus buster working and up to date.
You can make it good and clean, just the way it should be. no more worries about old dos versions, all gone

this sort of thing needs careful planning(!) but would perhaps be your best way out.

doing it this way there would be no worries about long file names either.

best wishes, HJ

 

OK finished scandisk on drive D and there were no problems reported.

When I did the C:\>dir /s /p /a ????????????????*.*
I got thousands of files, am lost in the immensity and have no idea what I am looking for.
What I did notice were a great deal od directories and files with 0 files and 0 bytes.
Also lots of them looked weird like this:

vxt 0.00 <DIR> 01-00-34 12:27p

Isn't the 01-00-34 supposed to be a date. You know Month-Day- Year.
Is that strange to you or is it normal?
Many, many directories contained over 1 or 2 billion bytes.

At the end of the list was the message "File allocation table bad drive C "
Maybe that is something usable.

An uneducated guess would be somehow these files were given WAY more bytes then they actually had. I did keep getting a message like this "the size of WIN386.SWP FILE is being misreported. Some programs might be unable to find entire file or there might be invalid data towards the end of the file. "

That's when all the directories being scanned started messaging like this "C:\Dir00002 directory is damaged scandisk will delete the file and rename it "

Here is one of the bad files that was first reported exactly as it was shown.....C:\PROGRA~1\BLACKI~1\PLANES~1\CA_FEL.BIF

iS ANY OF THIS INFO OF ANY HELP.

Do i need to copy the list like the other ones and post it?
It is BIG.

 

SOOOOO,putting it simply
,,,,can I transfer all my files, as they are, somehow to Drive D, the 2cnd partition of my 46 gigabyte Hard Drive?

Then wipe clean Drive C. Totally wiping every bit and byte of the face of the drive.

Then....loading a pristine DOS to Drive C

Then loading Windows 98SE from the CD.

Then run a brand new up to date AntiVirus on each individual file then if it comes clean transfer the clean file over to Drive C.


Is this a possibility or am I just way off the mark?

 

Hi again - sorry lost the dialup

yes blakston very nearly, only

you don't have to bother about DOS at all

well only as much as you are doing at the moment from the floppy.

But this is not like old DOS which very correctly worries BB and all of us with its odd incompatible versions

as you made the startup floppy from your CDROM it is exactly the same version

got a bit going for it, this way, I feel

if you can lay your hands on 800MB or bigger that's spare I really think it's your best and easiest route - do it carefully and it's as bomb-proof as you can, even if the old HDD still has virus on it you should be OK...

GL, HJ

**edit** and none of the old muck will matter in the slightest

 

Hugh,
Is the DOS on my computer not exactly the best example?
How can I replace it with a clean, perfect working one?

It's late here, I'll have to continue this tommorrow.
Thanks for all your help.

 

DOS is meaning two separate things here might be confusing you

when your Windows was first put on the PC it was put on over an old version of DOS

in the old days (Window 3.1, Windows for Workgroups 3.11) you had to do it that way; DOS first, then put Windows on after

with Windows98 you don't have to put DOS on first

you would start from the same floppy you are using, true. But from the moment you put the CDROM in and type E:SETUP or whatever, forget DOS, from this point on just think Windows

where it gets a bit confusing is that if you prod W98 hard enough it will tell you that DOS version 7 is happening; but this is of no consequence

what really does matter is that all the files are of the same version - else you get immersed in the brown stuff - all sorts of things go wrong, or just won't work at all

all you really need the floppy for is to start your machine to the A:\> prompt - and to equip the machine with enough drivers to be able to read the CDROM (basic but essential)

we should check this, can do it now then I would like some crash! but this is easy:

when you can, start the machine using the floppy but this time choose 1 for Start WITH CDROM support

A: will be the floppy
C: we don't touch (at this time)
D: will be partition2
E: will be partition3
F: will be the RAMDRIVE (pls don't worry about this) and
G: should be the CD ROM

when your A:\> prompt arrives, look above it to confirm these letters, I think I have them correct but just in case...

...easy to check. Look a couple of lines above. you should see something like

The diagnostic Tools were successfully loaded to Drive F:

and a line rather like:
Drive G: = Driver MSCD001 Unit0

this line identifies the letter for your CD ROM drive:

if you see the letter G: in the MSCD001 line, put in any CDROM preferably your W98 CD, and type

A:\> dir g: <enter>
you should see a list of files.

If it is the W98 CD, among the files look for SETUP.EXE
this should give you heart!

let me know pls?

we'll do it yet! well done for bearing with it. We shall get this sorted...

Very Good Luck, Hugh