Win98SE wont boot; Registry errors? >Updated<

[flippinfleck]

Ok, the computer worked lastnight. I was on it till like 4a. I haven't touched it in almost 12 hours. Now when I try to boot it up, it takes ten minutes and then it says something about a registry error. It flashes real quick so I can't get a chance to read it and then it clears and tells me to reboot. What could be causing this? Does this mean I lose everything on it and have to reformat/reinstall??? If you need computer specs, other info, let me know.


>edit I did a scandisk with a boot disk, found a bad sector. The only file located in that sector was system.dat How much of an impact would that have? edit<

 

[Floyd]

> &quot;I did a scandisk with a boot disk, found a bad sector. The only file located in that sector was system.dat How much of an impact would that have?&quot;

LOL! Not laughing at your misfortune...but that file is your registry (rather, half of it).

Boot do DOS and type scanreg /restore...your system keeps 5 backup copies of your registry in compressed format on the hard drive. This command will allow you to select one of the backups. Take special note of the dates of your backups, and choose the most recent one which you know was created before the corruption occured.

Now here's the kicker, drives which develop bad sectors often tend to go rapidly downhill. I'd recommend doing a complete backup as soon as absolutely possible. If that's impossible to do immediately, at least make a copy of your user.dat and system.dat files to another physical drive (not another partition on the same physical drive) or compress them and copy to diskettes. Same goes for any irreplaceable work (documents, images, etc.) that you've created.

Best regards,
Floyd

 

[flippinfleck]

Floyd, thanks for the tips. I had actually gotten the computer to boot and it restored the registry for me. I then promptly started moving all of my personal effects across the network to my secondary computer. So if I copy the system.dat/user.dat to the other computer, then get the bad drive replaced, what do I do with them? I mean, a new drive means I have to start over w/fresh install of everything. Thanks again.
flip

 

[Floyd]

Sorry I've taken so long to get back to you.

That's true, if you get a new drive, it's best to reinstall the operating system and all your applications...particularly if the OS has been installed for a while and has had a lot of software installed and uninstalled, hardware changes, etc. My suggestion to save the registry was in case something happened in the meantime which prevented you from being able to restore it from the hard drive.

However, if that's the only bad sector developed on the drive, I would make a full system backup to CD's or another hard drive so you won't have to reinstall everything. That decision is subjective, depending on whether you have the time and inclination to do a full reinstall and reconfigure everything. It can be a big task. If your system has been satisfactorily stable up until now, no need to create more work for yourself

Best regards,
Floyd