Win98 acting weird?!?

[xmaddness]

Okay, A friend of mine asked me to look at her moms computer because it wasn't working. She said it stopped working after she tried to put XP on it (what a surprise) Anyways, I took it home and booted it up. The windows 98 splash (logo.sys) screen came up, background loaded, but no icons or startmenu bar, just the wallpaper and the mouse cursor. The only thing that reacts is the good ole 3 finger salute. When that is done the only thing running is explorer. Okay, so first thing I did was the ole scanreg restore bit. It worked. I got the desktop back and everything is fine. Well, almost...

Her mother had MSWord 95 installed and wanted to have it upgraded to Office 2000. So thats fine. I grab the cd and start loading it up. It finishes the installation and tells me I need to reboot to finish the installation.

This is the weird part... After I rebooted, I recieved the same previous error....

Now, I can boot into safe mode and everything loads on the desktop. All the icons are there, the start menu, etc.. So I figure it has to be one of the following:

• Corrupt Registry
• Corrupt vxd driver
• A bad statement in the win.ini
• Bad statement in the system.ini
• Autoexec.bat or config.sys did something weird

Well, I have checked all of these and everything appears fine. I've checked the registry localuser/blahblah/run and run- and runonce, nothing there.

I've gone thru the selective bootups and booted without the system.ini, win.ini, checked the autoexec.bat and the config.sys and booted with each selected seperatly to narrow it down... But I'm still getting the error in a normal boot.

Log in safe mode? everything is fine.

I've run all the system information tools and verified the vxds and .dlls and replaced a few from cabs, registry, ect... still nothing... I've run scandisk and that finds no errors.

I've also run the scanreg /fix.. nada..

What am I missing here? This is beginning to drive me nuts.

I know I can just reformat reinstall, but I know there has to be a way of getting this and I'm determined to get it going. (last night I was actually comparing an export of the previous good registry(pre-office) and the new registry(post-office) line by line)

Oh I've also checked the bootgui bootdir, etc... in the msdos.sys file.. all is fine in there.


So any suggestions? (beside the reformat reinstall, which is gunna happen tonight when I get no replies on this thread)

Oh... BTW.... I don't think XP got into the installation at all, because the first thing it does is put in the boot.ini boot menu, which wasn't on the machine... but am I missing somethin else in there that XP left?

[allenb1963]

you can always look in the 'add/remove programs ' menu for any signs of XP...if she did an upgrade, it *might* be there and be removeable. Just a thought....

[Conf1rm3d_K1ll]

Originally posted here by xmaddness

Oh I've also checked the bootgui bootdir, etc... in the msdos.sys file.. all is fine in there.


So any suggestions? (beside the reformat reinstall, which is gunna happen tonight when I get no replies on this thread)

How "did it stop working after she tried to put XP on it"? Does she remember the error? Would it just not boot? Did it just quit halfway through the install?



Seriously, the best thing for these dodgy 98 machines is a format (as you've already mentioned) and fresh install. It sure beats trying to fault find..

[var_x]

I know of a Registry hack that disables desktop icons on startup. Check in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE /SOFTWARE/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Run There might be a REG_DWORD value in there named NoDesktop with Data value = 1 Check that out and let me know what happens. Hope it will help.

[xmaddness]

allenb, I'll look for that when I get back on...

Conf1rm3d.. Ya I am slowly getting there with this machine, although I have a few more things I want to check out first. She doesn't remember what happened, what caused it, where it stopped, nothing. She uses computers to play solitare and thats about it.

var_x, ya thats one of the first things I check for virii and stuff. But the run, run-, and runonce were all clear. Heh, ya and it was local_machine I ckeck, not local user... heh, after searching thru line of the reg by hand in .txt format all the keys start to just blend together.. lol


Thanks for the replies.. Any other advice would be helpful....

[Furinax]

why mite she be puting Xp on here comp any why i mean xp sucks in my opein its like turnin your comp into a mac

[antihaxor]

Here is what I would do before ANY format.(every tech support rep knows that copout )

1)Get system information running(startrograms:acc.systools:system inforamation.
2)click the tools menu at the top and choose"system configuration utility"
3)For a raw full vfat32 load . select "selective startup" from the general tab(default).
4)Uncheck every thing except "system.ini" then click the advanced button
5) uncheck disable fast shutdown.
6) reboot that bitch.

if error still occurs

reboot.
hit f8 for selective startup
hit numeric selection( I forgot the # this is from mem.) for"step by step confirmation"
keep hitting yes until sometime fuxors. If it does reboot and skip that option next load.

[xmaddness]

anti, tried that.. I even loaded each vxd up to the mouse driver seperately.. still nothing