Help me fix a problem on a laptop

[TerranForces]

My Dad's company has some old laptops that they are giving the salesmen. These things are pretty old. I think they have 64mb ram and 300-400mhz processors with 5gb hardrives. Because of the low ram, they loaded Windows 98 on them. I suggested Windows 2000 Pro, but whatever.

Two of them are having problems though. They don't want to spend money for new ones, and certain software is registered to those machines. Plus, they want them all to have the same laptop for troubleshooting.

He brought one home today to try and fix. I am not good with old systems and haven't touched Win98 in years. The "errors" are very minor. It is just a simple notification of some missing files on startup. Seems like a driver or registry issue maybe. From what I could tell, it functions fine. Might as well fix them though. Here are the exact errors:

After Win98 screen, black screen saying:

vredir.vxd is missing or something, press any key. Then, it comes up again with dfs.vxd

After continuing to the desktop, a window pops up before it loads. It says:

dynamic link or library is missing
msnp32.dll
Some error with Windows network below it

Any ideas on how to get rid of these or what is causing them. I appreciate any help. Lol, I guess I can give you a gmail account or something for helping.

 

[vailr]

Originally posted by: TerranForces
Because of the low ram, they loaded Windows 98 on them.

Did "they" do a fresh install of Windows 98 (or 98SE)?
If not, I'd say: obtain a Windows 98SE install disc, boot from it, and do a reinstall on top of the existing O.S.

 

[TerranForces]

I was told it was a fresh install. It looks pretty clean. The only files on there are the accounting software, Spybot, and CCleaner. I don't have the 98Se disc on me.

 

[pkme2]

The laptop is a strong client for LINUX. If you use Fedora Core 4 or Ubuntu, you don't need any drivers or Windows Office, Linux is free and their Open Office is similar to Win OFFice, plus its free again.

http://www.linux.org/
http://www.ubuntulinux.org/
http://www.redhat.com/en_us/USA/fedora/

If you have questions:
http://www.fedorafaq.org/

 

[TerranForces]

I tried Linspire on an old Celeron. It was the worst experience of my life. It took over a minute to open any file and I couldn't connect to the internet. I was hoping it would be good since the Celly only had 128mb ram, but it was pathetic. I put Windows 2000 on it and it is awesome.

 

[JimPhelpsMI]

Hi, That's usually a sign that someone has deleted a program instead of un-installing it. The error message usually also says that the Load came from WIN.INI or the REGISTRY. It's usually OK to search Win.ini for a load line that points to the missing file and add a ";" at the start of the line to disable it. If it's not there try searching the registry and remove it if found. It may be there several times so keep searching. You should use SCANREG and make a reg backup before you change anything. If you have problems after changing Win.Ini go back in and remove the ";". Problems after changing the registry can be fixed by running Scanreg from Dos and restoring the backup you made. Another fix may be to use FILE CHECKER in SYSTEM INFORMATION. It will restore missing files from the 98 CD. If none of this helps you take the advice about reloading. A reload of 98 over itself will not dump any of your stuff and may help you. Luck, Jim

 

[GamerExpress]

Originally posted by: vailr

Originally posted by: TerranForces
Because of the low ram, they loaded Windows 98 on them.

Did "they" do a fresh install of Windows 98 (or 98SE)?
If not, I'd say: obtain a Windows 98SE install disc, boot from it, and do a reinstall on top of the existing O.S.

QFT

 

[FlyingPenguin]

A google search for those file names will tell you how to restore the files.

Be aware that you may not need them. Someone may just have delected a folder containing a program that used those files. Check the startups using MSCONFIG and disable anything you don't need running on startup.