Beware of the extras on the Win98 CD!!!

[Matt]

While searching the Windows 98 install CD for basically anything I stumbled upon various tools. Some of the programs I found ranged from admin tools to network management stuff (I think). Since I had just performed a clean install of Windows and didn't have anything of importance on my HD I went ahead and installed most of these additional programs. Most of what I installed ranged from monitoring software to tweakui. Everything on my computer ran smoothly after all of that software was installed. Even when I had shut my computer down nothing out of the ordinary happened. However, when tried to reboot the computer later that day I had gotton an error reading:
"Cannot find win.com" and it also read something to the effect that windows therefore could not restart. I tried to perform a "dirty" install but the installer wouldn't write to the C drive until I reformatted everything.
What happened?

[s_antley]

You overwrote the file accidently. Probably when you installed some of the installation scripts inadvertently. All you needed to do was to extract the file win.com. That should have fixed your problem. (I think). :-)

[Matt]

I tried to find the win.com file on the install CD but was unable to locate a copy. It wasn't even on my install disk. And since I never made a start-up disk I wasn't sure if I even had another copy of win.com anywhere else. Still, I wonder why windows would put the reskit (or something like that) directory in the windows 98 CD and put install programs in there that might write over win.com. Also, when I tried to get the installer to just copy the missing file back onto my HD durring a re-install it gave me an error saying that I didn't have enough space free on the drive and couldn't proceed. I even had 2 gigs free before lossing the file.

I guess the Windows 98 people weren't kidding when they said that I will need that boot disk durring any Win98 install.

Thnx for the tip.

[duke]

I had the same thing happen to me when I installed a new program. Upon re-boot, the computer stopped at the C> prompt, unable to find win.com. I found win.com in the windows folder. The new program had edited my autoexec.bat file and changed the path. I "rem" the new path line and brought back the old path line and included the new program in the path. Upon resetting the computer, everything worked fine, even the new program.

You can check your current path in the dos window by typing the command "path" without the quotes.

Good Luck