Help Cannot boot up Windows

[blindspot]

Please help me help my friend.

Win 98OS. Upon boot-up, screen shows missing file: MSVCRT.DLL, as well as error on explorer.exe. That's it. Computer freezes. Can't boot windows. CTRL-ALT-DEL shows nothing running on the background (no explorer, no systray). Same thing with Safe mode.

I ran out of ideas. I know reformatting the whole thing ill "solve" it, but he's gonna lose a lot of files.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

AMD K6-2 400Mhz (Compaq)
Windows 98 OS

 

[minendo]

Try reinstalling windows over the current installation. This will allow you to enter windows and backup all necessary files.

 

[morkinva]

My friend had something like this a few days ago. We booted to a dos prompt and typed: scanreg /restore which brought up a few previously saved versions of your registry. We picked the newest one to restore and then it booted up fine.

Good luck to you.

 

[blindspot]

thanks. Will try your suggestions.