WinBlows 98 BrainFart - I need a hand here...

JPS

Golden Member
Apr 23, 2001
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Let me start off by saying that my OS specialties lie in NT & W2K & Linux. My brainfart involves Windows98. My brother, on the other side of the country, still runs W98 and has a problem that I cannot diagnose over the phone. He shutdown normally the other night and now boots into safe-mode evertime he starts up. I aksed if he changed any hardware or software and he said no - only thing he did was install some Yahoo task bar into his browser. He found out he hated it and tried to uninstall it by just deleting the folder - not using the uninstall applet. I doubt that would do it, but on a whim I had him install the yahoo bar again and them unstall it properly. Still gets safe mode when he reboots.

We tried the following last night and nothing workd:

-scanreg /restore only gave options for the last four days, a date when the computer still worked properly did not show up.

-doing F8 and selecting bootlog.txt did not not help either, he could not find the bootlog.txt file once he rebooted (using find file in W98)

-Tried repairing IE to no avail

What else can I try? Trying to avoid doing a fullblown reinstall if possible. If it gets to that, he is getting W2K (assuming his hardware can handle it - P200 w/256MB of RAM).
 

Tiger

Platinum Member
Oct 9, 1999
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P200 w/256 might be a tad underpowered for W2K.
I suspect the uninstall of Yahoo took something windows critical with it. If that's the case a re-install over the top of whats there might work. Kind of a last ditch effort before a drive flush. I've seen it work a couple of times.

edit: You might have him boot to safe mode and check device manager for any glaring errors. Maybe the uninstall stomped all over a device driver or two.

 

Woodchuck2000

Golden Member
Jan 20, 2002
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Stick 2K on for him. Lack of RAM tends to be the big bottlneck on 2K/XP but 256Mb is more than ample. XP runs perfectly well on my P233/96 laptop (much to my surprise) so I'm sure 2K will run fine on his machine.

As far as the problem itself goes, does the machine try to boot in normal mode at all? Traditionally it should try and boot normally after re-booting in safe mode. If this doesnt happen, something serious has gone wrong. If it does, how far does the machine get before falling over?
 

ChemMan

Member
May 24, 2001
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If I remember correctly, bootlog.txt is a hidden file, and he would have to enable show all files in order to find it even via windows search.

Just try hitting F8 at boot time and choose the normal boot. Win98 has a habit of booting into safe mode for no damn reason. This whole thing could just be a coincidence.
 

DeschutesCore

Senior member
Jul 20, 2002
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Have him right click on msdos.sys and edit it. You need to make sure the BootFailSafe option is equal to zero. Sometimes will set this to 1 and it will always boot into safemode. 0 = SafeMode OFF, 1 = SafeMode ON.

If he can't see msdos.sys, go to Windows Explorer / View / Folder Options and then disable "Hide Protected OS files" or something like that, can't remember exactly at the moment.

DC