Win98 SE won't boot - HIMEM.SYS is missing.

[bUnMaNGo]

I posted this in the Technical Support forum too, but I was hoping that some of you guys here would be able to help me out too. I have a Sony Vaio laptop running Win98SE, and I had to reboot to change some network settings. However, when I rebooted, it would give me this error, and then dump me at the command prompt:

Starting Windows 98...

Windows XMS Driver Version 3.95
Extended Memory Specification (XMS) Version 3.0
Copyright 1988-1995 Microsoft Corp.

ERROR: Unable to controle A20 line!
XMS Driver not installed.

HIMEM.SYS is missing.
Make sure that the file is in your Windows directory.


from that last line, I did a dir c:\windows\himem.sys and it showed up as a file 33,191 bytes, 05-11-98 8:01p

I don't see how simply rebooting would cause this to happen. I really don't want to have to reformat, especially since I don't have a cdrom drive for it- however I do have the setup cabs on another partition on the laptop. It would just be a pain in the butt to reformat, that's all. Any way I could make a "rescue disk" off of another Win98SE machine to restore it? Thanks in advance.

 

[Monel Funkawitz]

Put up a cut and paste of your autoexec.bat and config.sys files here and lemme take a look.

 

[bUnMaNGo]

my config.sys is blank... here's my autoexec.bat:

@ECHO OFF
@SET CLASSPATH=C:\PROGRA~1\PHOTOD~1.1\ADOBEC~1
@REM Environment Settings for McAfee VirusScan
@SET PATH=%PATH%;C:\PROGRA~1\NETWOR~1\MCAFEE~1
REM Environment Settings for McAfee VirusScan
SET PATH=%PATH%;C:\PROGRA~1\NETWOR~1\MCAFEE~1

an update though- first, I tried using the Win98 SE boot disk (the one created from add/remove programs, Windows Startup Disk in control panel), and it couldn't initialize the ramdisk. I then hard booted, then the bootdisk worked. I ran scandisk, but there were no problems. After that, I hard booted again, and it would reboot itself midway while booting, then brings it to the boot options screen (safe mode, safe mode w/ network support, etc). It boots in safe mode. Hope this helps.

 

[abracadabra1]

you may just want to reinstall win98se.
it should keep your old files and registry intact and repair that pesky himem.sys

 

[DaveJ]

DO NOT REINSTALL WINDOWS! 🙂 This is easily fixable...

It looks like your PATH statement is screwed up:

This:



<<
@SET CLASSPATH=C:\PROGRA~1\PHOTOD~1.1\ADOBEC~1
@REM Environment Settings for McAfee VirusScan
@SET PATH=%PATH%;C:\PROGRA~1\NETWOR~1\MCAFEE~1
REM Environment Settings for McAfee VirusScan
SET PATH=%PATH%;C:\PROGRA~1\NETWOR~1\MCAFEE~1
>>



should look like this:

set path=c:\windows\;c:\windows\system;C:\PROGRA~1\NETWOR~1\MCAFEE~1



<< SET CLASSPATH=C:\PROGRA~1\PHOTOD~1.1\ADOBEC~1 >>



Not sure what this is, but if you need it, leave it on a separate line

HTH!

Dave

 

[yazz]

the A20 line is missing seems like a hardware problem. motherboard could be broke?
i remember coming across a proble like this before. id try everyone elses advice first.
if that does not work then its hardware failure