A very curious Win98SE problem...

[Mini-Me]

Hi there.
:)

This is very curious. I went to a friends house the other day, cos she is having the usual Win95/98 woes. I fixed them all for her, and left.

The next day, she rang back to say to me that the whole desktop had changed, the background had changed, the dial-up connection and several other programs are no longer there. She said that "Everything was fine last night, and I shut the machine off in the normal way, and when I rebooted, everything was changed."

Sounds like a change of user to me, so I went to change the user back, but there are no users saved on this machine at all, so there is nothing much to work with...

The PC does not ask for logon information during boot-up(it never did even before), so this is odd too.

At this point, I am unsure exactly how to proceed except that if it were my box, I would be tempted to flatten(erase) the hard-drive and clean-install her Windows 98SE CD.

She bought the machine 2nd hand, and it already had the previous owner's 98 install on it, but it seemed to run OK even with all his old junk on it. Part of the process of my 1st visit, was to uninstall all that gunk and to install only programs she wanted. All that went well, with no unexpected errors of any kind.

She also runs AVG Free Version antivirus, and updates frequently and runs scans, and nothing was reported, so this is probably better then no anti-virus software at all...

Weird, huh?

Can anyone here suggest what they think might be going on, as this is a new one on me.

[Whyzman]

If she hasn't booted up a number of times, you might try scanreg /restore and select an earlier registry...

[Mini-Me]

Can you restore in 98? I thought that was only a concept they brought in from Me...

Anyway, I'll try that, and see what happens.

Thanks for the suggestion.

Other comments still welcome at this point though!!!
;)

[Fruss Tray Ted]

Did you just remove a bunch of programs and then run away? Did you stick around for a reboot or did you leave it to her to find out later if the changes stuck (remove the letter 't' if necessary)?

The lapse between what you did, or what you did in itself needs to be looked at and separated.

Need more details

Scanreg is ok but did she do something with a false sense of security after your tweaking and get her pc into troubled waters?

[Mini-Me]

Yep stuck around to make sure all was OK before I left.
I did not uninstall then run away!!!
:D

Having uninstalled all the extra gunk, I then restarted to check everything was still OK at that point. Checks in control panel showed nothing unhappy in device manager or any of it's drivers.

The latest report is that the dial-up connection has changed yet again. I deleted the old one(belonged to the previous owner of the box), and setup a new one - aparantly the new one I setup last night, has disappeared and the old connection has re-installed itself again.

...the ghost in the machine or what!

Personally, I think her son has been "tinkering", or it has a machevious virus that is not being detected - programs and dial-up connections do not just change themselves.

I have setup lots and lots of 98 boxes in my career so far, and they never do these odd things except this one.(however, I did not set this one up, so it probably should not be counted...)

Her son is an enthusiastic 8-year old tinkerer, and I'm wondering if he has been in the system folder playing around with files he should not have been.

Children are funny little critters - I have had more then one VCR and car-stereo in my workshop doing all manner of crazy things, and when you open them up, you find coins or nails or other metal objects inside!
:p

However, with this PC, that is not so likely, however, where young kids are concerned, I tend to never discount the possibility that little fingers have been involved in creating the problem...

[Sylvander]

"Can you restore in 98?"
Sure can! :)
Scanreg automatically makes a backup of all the configuration files [mainly the registry] at the 1st boot after midnight of each day on which there is a boot.
It saves 5 of the latest of these, and any one of them can be restored using...
c:\>scanreg /restore

"...the ghost in the machine or what!"
If you made recent changes, and any one of those changes were such that the PC couldn't boot...
Windows would automatically revert to the last good registry [one that produced a successful boot].
Of course...
That [old] registry would probably be a mismatch for the [new] file system, so you could see some strange effects.
That's the reason I like to make image backups of C: because the Windows/Program files, and the configuration files, will be guaranteed to be a match for each other.

If there is a FAT32 partition [other than C:] on the internal HDD, with space enough for an image backup of C:, then you could use the free trial copy of "Image for DOS" on the [FREE] "Emergency Boot CD" [EBCD] to make image backups of C: once the software is as it should be and performing well.
If there is any software trouble, just restore a good recent image of C:
[I've done that twice today so far to fix software glitches (trying to practise editing my Windows passwords offline, and it isn't working)].

1. How to make a free “Smart Boot Manager” floppy
http://www.pcguide.com/vb/showthread.php?t=41498
This makes it easier to boot a chosen drive [particularly the one holding the EBCD].

2. How to make a free EBCD bootable CD
http://www.pcguide.com/vb/showthread.php?t=41485
This has a number of useful utilities included including "Image" [for DOS, by Terabyte] & "File Manager".

[Mini-Me]

Thanks, Sylvander - I will check out those links.
:)

Unfortunately, she would have rebooted more then 5 times by now, I would think, so I might take the option of long-formatting the HDD and clean-installing.
At this stage I will also zapdisk the MBR to make sure nothing is lurking in there too.

I think this is the only way we can be sure, that everything is clean for the reinstall.

I'll keep you all posted...

[mjc]

They key is five GOOD boots...getting dumped into Safe Mode doesn't count...