Friends computer says "cannot find System.ini." right before it would usually boot to the desktop then shuts down. I can get to the desktop in safe mode. What do I need to do to boot to windows without going through safemode? Is there a special disk or anything?
Windows 98 says "cannot find system.ini." then won't boot?
- Thread starter mdennison
- Start date
All depends on what you want to do with the box once you get it booted. Can you boot to dos? You said that you can get into windows in safe mode, have you done a scandisk?
Before you can fix it, you need to find out what went wrong in the first place. Clues from the days leading up to the crash are helpful. Was he having problems booting before? Did he ever get any strange errors? BSOD's? How old/what brand hd is it?
If you just want to boot to the dos prompt, hit F8 as the computer is loading (before you see the splash screen for 98) and you will be prompted with a list to choose from.
Before you can fix it, you need to find out what went wrong in the first place. Clues from the days leading up to the crash are helpful. Was he having problems booting before? Did he ever get any strange errors? BSOD's? How old/what brand hd is it?
If you just want to boot to the dos prompt, hit F8 as the computer is loading (before you see the splash screen for 98) and you will be prompted with a list to choose from.
Yes it boots to dos. The hard drive is a 40 gig maxtor about 6 months old. His computer was in sleep mode and would not wake up when shaking the mouse so he just hit the power button and this has been happening every since. If it ever boots back to windows, i plan on reinstalling windows. Or if you can tell me how to replace the system.ini. file to fix it, that would help.
You could prolly just reinstall windows over the current installation and have it work ok.
First course of action though, should be a scandisk. Boot into safe mode, start it from there. If there are bad sectors, it may find them and move the info to a better location on the platter. If that is the case, I'd do a backup of all the info on the drive (personal files, stuff like that) onto another drive if possible. If not, to a cd would be fine. Then use Maxtor's utility to llf. That will write all zero's (i think, or it's ones) to the drive. From there you have to fdisk and partition it. Then format and reinstall windows.
After that it's just a matter of moving all your files back from the second hd or cdrom and reinstalling all the goodies.
First course of action though, should be a scandisk. Boot into safe mode, start it from there. If there are bad sectors, it may find them and move the info to a better location on the platter. If that is the case, I'd do a backup of all the info on the drive (personal files, stuff like that) onto another drive if possible. If not, to a cd would be fine. Then use Maxtor's utility to llf. That will write all zero's (i think, or it's ones) to the drive. From there you have to fdisk and partition it. Then format and reinstall windows.
After that it's just a matter of moving all your files back from the second hd or cdrom and reinstalling all the goodies.
I did a scandisk from safe mode and it was fine. Would like to get to desktop w/o being in safe mode. From there I can fix it. Just don't want to spend the time to reinstall windows and all the drivers. Once i'm to desktop I can fix.
Hmm, if scandisk didn't find any problems, and you don't want to reinstall windows...
<< ...If it ever boots back to windows, i plan on reinstalling windows... >>
...then I'm not sure where to begin. I've never lost my system.ini file so...
<< ...If it ever boots back to windows, i plan on reinstalling windows... >>
...then I'm not sure where to begin. I've never lost my system.ini file so...
Boot to Dos and when there type
C:\windows\command\scanreg/restore
Maybe it will restore a configuration that will let you boot to Desktop without Safemode.
Chose one that is a few days old.
C:\windows\command\scanreg/restore
Maybe it will restore a configuration that will let you boot to Desktop without Safemode.
Chose one that is a few days old.
It would be nice to know which ini file it is. I have pulled some ini files off of the web before. I think windrivers,com has some. Then if you know in which folder it goes for example windows system system32 you could reinstall it through dos using a floppy. Also you might be able to find the ini file on the cd.
If you can get it to boot into safe mode, do a search on C: for "system.*" or "sys*" and see what it comes up with.
- Mar 4, 2000
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If you can boot to DOS, then you can go to C:\WINDOWS and find SYSTEM.INI. There are usually several backups there as well. If SYSTEM.INI is not there, then rename one of the backups as SYSTEM.INI. Examples of backups are SYSTEM NUx, SYSTEM.RSC, SYSTEM.*. There are two .INI files necessary to load Windows . . . WIN.INI and SYSTEM.INI. System.dat and system.dao are to be left alone . . . they are registry files.
At the prompt type
ren oldname.ext newname.ext
Example: to rename system.bak to system.ini you'd type
ren system.bak system.ini
ren oldname.ext newname.ext
Example: to rename system.bak to system.ini you'd type
ren system.bak system.ini
<< At the prompt type
ren oldname.ext newname.ext
Example: to rename system.bak to system.ini you'd type
ren system.bak system.ini >>
Thanks!
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