solved (I hope) "while initializing IOS, I/O subsystem driver failed to load..."

[somethingwitty]

edit: I think this one's been solved, thanks for the help...long story short, dell led me through a debug of C, then i fdisked, formatted, and installed: no re-occurrance yet.


ok, here's my situation (kinda long, but *please* read to the end and help!), and current steps taken to solve. please comment, offer advice, exorcism, etc:

I formatted my hd using format c:/s, then copied over the 98se cabs and installed the OS. next, got the drivers up, no problems evident. started re-installing programs, planning to get my ideal system setup and ghost. here's where it gets iffy-the problem i've had both times I've tried the fresh re-install *MAY* have occured after installing the same program each time-not sure.

anyways, here's the error message I get trying to boot into windows
(during the splash screen):

"while initializing device IOS I/O subsystem driver failed to load...
file in .\iosubsys (thats windows\system\iosubsys) is currupt, or sys is low on memory"

soo, I boot into safe mode, and un-install the program that I suspect is causing this. I also restore (using system file checker) 20 out of the 24 files in windows\system\iosubsys, and copy the other 4 over from a backup of my old system directory, made b/4 starting the re-install. reboot, problem is still there.

Next step was to re-run 98 setup (without re-formatting the drive). did that, re-booted, same error. (note: checked bootlog and bootlog.prv, no helpful info found). formatted the drive again, same install process for OS and drivers, same problem (as i said, MAY have occured after installing the same program-musicmatch, btw...not sure)

called dell support, was told that the problem was very likely something that simply formatting couldnt solve. that brings up my first actual question-is that true? i mean, if i hadnt installed this one program, would this problem have probably occurred anyways?

after a lengthy call with dell, in which we never did get around to re-installing windows (cd-rw acted up a bit, fixed it, etc), i was told to boot off the dell resource disk, run complete diags, and call when it's done (~3hrs expected). thats running now, on my other system, obviously.

so, as i sit here waiting for diags to finish-any comments on the current situation. im especially interested in finding out if this whole mess was bound to happen anyways, or occurred when a single program conflicted with another. i asked dell support if it could somehow be one bad file caused by installing a program, he was pretty sure of himself when he said no, it's a drive problem that can be fixed but requires more than a format c:/s

thanks for any help/advice

 

[Sonic625]

try this:
start in Safe mode,
goto start-run
Type "regedit"
hit the plus under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
hilight enum
hit the delete key
yes to delete it
Exit, reboot
Once you get to windows and it does not detect new devices, goto control panel,
Add new hardware
Let it detect and install the hardware, reboot when it says to reboot, after the reboot it will install alll the devices on the system, reboot a couple of times.
When it is finished loading devices, goto device manager
There will be ! marks on like 4 or 5 componets.
Remove the corrosponding components that do not have the ! mark then remove the ! point device, dont reboot and do this for all the devices with the ! mark on them, after you do the last one, reboot, let id detect the new hardware and then check Device manager for any problems if this works.
Thanks,
Sonic625

 

[Saltin]

The Dell Tech thinks your Harddrive needs a low-level format I bet. It may not be the solution, but it's a decent guess.
How old is your system? The Harddrive in particular?

 

[somethingwitty]

Sonic625:

thanks for the advice. unfortunately i cant try it now, as the system is running diags-but i will definitely keep it in mind. thanks

Saltin:

the system is about a year old, purchased from dell around this time last year. primary hard drive is the original drive, so that should be a year old too.

the dell tech, when explaining that format c:/s doesnt do much aside from deleting everything, referred to defragging and fdisking the drive each time i plan to start over. he certainly seemed to imply that the steps i've been missing are tough enough that I ought to call dell whenever i want to re-install...though that was towards the start of the call, when support is still trying to judge user's abilities-so i dont know exactly what he's suggesting/how hard it is/might be.

thanks for the info.

any other advice/info? anyone else?