OH Lord!... do I reFORMAT? help me please

[smp]

I just got home. Hey looky! the computer is off? hmm?... /me turns it on, goes to make coffee ---- windows registry checker is open "Can not find system.ini" Doesn't boot, dead end, shutdown.
I had it overclocked, but I don't think that would cause those kinds of problems. I brought it back down anyways, and it just happened again. Boot disk, go into C:, all my partitions are still there, try running it from there.. no go, same error and then a shutdown. I'm pretty screwed huh? I don't know what it could be though. I haven't been playing with the registry, or even doing anything questionable to it. I think I'm screwed and that I have to reinstall.. if I only format my c: drive (all the way to F: I have).. and reinstall windows on it, would that work? I've never had to reinstall windows on a "worked in" system before... btw, no virus scan, could it be???

 

[Nerd]

possibly a virus. maybe sub7? or something along those lines. some programs will automatically delete your system.ini.

 

[smp]

should I format or is there a fix? I can't just install windows over the old one can I? And if I do.... can I leave the other partitions intact? Windows was originally installed on C: (98).. d: e: f: are just storage and programs.. a lot of programs in e: ???

 

[Quickfingerz]

yup, i say reinstall the same operating system again. everything should work fine.

 

[smp]

Reinstall like --> pop the cd in and go, or like format c: , then pop cd etc...
can I leave my other partitins alone?
I just don't want to screw anything up, I would like to keep all of my programs and files, I have backups, but reinstallig everything would take forever. I have to learn how to make proper back ups. Is there any sort of steps I should know? Thanks..

 

[Antza]

Win98 are you using? You SHOULD be able to re-install just by throwing in the CD, and running setup.exe... everything SHOULD be fine, even your desktop items and registry SHOULD be untouched, just the system files will be re-installed. But then again, it's Microsoft. I've done it couple of times myself and been just fine.
For the reason, I wouldn't believe it's a virus, you could run a scan, but I'd rather think it's just a random disk error. Those happen all the time, especially if your HD isn't brand new, so running scandisk with surface scan I think is more useful.
AK

 

[smp]

I've noticed (off of doing clean installs with 98) that it asks you to format your harddrive. So I guess I would decline and just tell it to fix? or install? Okay.. I'll see what happens.. if anyone else has an idea, let me know..

 

[smp]

Oh yeah, and my hard drive is new actually... I never bothered to defrag it though

 

[smp]

Uh oh.. this is looking worse now.. I boot off of the floppy, that has the cd drivers on it... it doesn't see the cd drive or the cdrw... I checked the cables and they were good and snug and they have power. I didn't change anything in the bios. They worked this afternoon.. how can I reinstall windows without my cdrom?

 

[cavingjan]

Have you run a scandisk on the drive to verify that it is ok?