Problem Starting up win98

[Cybr1d]

Hey everyone,

I'm having an issue with a neighbor's computer. She's running win98 on a compaq presario. These are the symptoms: As soon as it restarts, while loading windows it gives me a fatal error msg about explorer. Any ideas? I want to start the comp in safe mode, to see whats going on. How do I get into DOS through restarting the comp? f8 is the key to enter bios, but I didn't see anything helpful there. Thank you for your help.

[Gump]

Here are a couple of ways to get a 98 machine into "Safe Mode".

Close all open programs.
Click Star > Run. The Run dialog box appears.
Type msconfig and then click OK.

In the System Configuration Utility, click "Advanced."

In the Advanced Troubleshooting Settings dialog box, check Enable Startup Menu, Click OK. Click OK again when the System Configuration Utility reappears.

You will be prompted to restart the computer. Click Yes. The computer will restart in Safe mode. (This can take several minutes.)
Perform the troubleshooting steps for which you are using Safe Mode.
When you are finished with troubleshooting in Safe mode repeat steps 1-6, but in step 5, uncheck "Enable Start-up Menu."
Close all programs and restart the computer as you normally would.

Another method

Do one of the following:
Turn off the computer. Wait 30 seconds. Then turn the computer's power switch on again.
As the computer restarts, press and hold down the Ctrl key until the Windows 98 startup menu appears.
Choose Safe mode from the startup menu, and then press Enter. Windows starts in Safe mode.

Hope this helps.

[Cybr1d]

edit: I'm restoring her computer, and deleting all her stuff. Thnx for the help Gump. I guess i'll just take the easy way out :).

[wedjarl]

I know its quite irrelevant and wont help your problem. Im just curious about what friends told me couple of days ago. Is it true MS extended its support for Windows98 until 2006?
Tried searching in MS page but didnt find news about that.

-Thanks in advance-

[Cybr1d]

Yes they did.

[Info_Au]

Would a simple answer be to boot from floppy disk and install "Windows" from CD again over the top of whats stored there??

Not loosing any files this way except dial-up settings.
It would overwrite all windows files fixing most problems!!