cd rom

[Cammy]

About 4 months ago, my husband unhooked our computer and put it in storage. We hooked it back up about a month ago. He was messing around with it one day, and came and told me he had somehow deleted the operating system win98. We upgraded from 95 when we bought the computer. I have a win98 startup disk I created when I upgraded. I have a restore diskette I ordered a month ago. I did not receive a windows 98 cd. It was all factory installed.

I have been trying for the last month to reinstall the software, or do a restore. I have tried scanreg, booting up from my startup disk, none of the commands work. I have tried scanning the drive...can find no errors.

When I use the startup disk, and go into setup with cd rom support, it does the scans, and then hangs. No prompt, no nothin'. So I have to do a cold shut down, because I cannot access the start configs. I start over w/o the startup disk, and do a command prompt only. I can access some commands from here such as autoexec.bat. I cannot get into config sys. I can access DosStart.bat, and that is when I got all the errors. It told me the following:

memory manager not detected.
PCI audio driver NOT loading.
pci audio driver req emm386.
device driver mscd0001 not found.
extended memory driver not loaded.
syntax error and bad command file, then file not found.
I know mscd0001 is something to do with the cd rom.
What do all the other errors mean and is there a way to fix them?

I was a newbie when I bought my computer...all the info above I have run across came from research as problems arose. I would not buy another pb pc if they held a gun to my head.

But, for now, I am stuck with it.

It has given me some problems in the past, but NOTHING like this. Is this Corrective?

[Paleo Pete]

I never recommend a full format/reinstall except as a last resort, but if you are trying to do exactly that, it's the best way to go.

Quick Guide to a win98 Fresh Start (http://www.hardwarehell.com/fdisk.htm)

Hard Disk Partitioning and Fomatting Procedure (http://www.pcguide.com/proc/setup/hdd-c.html) might help.

Don't worry about all the error messages reported by dosstart.bat, they should be taken care of by the format and reinstall. Once you get the machine to boot to a floppy and format the drive you should be in good shape.

If you have problems and can't format the hard drive, let us know.

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[Cammy]

Originally posted by Paleo Pete:
I never recommend a full format/reinstall except as a last resort, but if you are trying to do exactly that, it's the best way to go.

Quick Guide to a win98 Fresh Start (http://www.hardwarehell.com/fdisk.htm)

Hard Disk Partitioning and Fomatting Procedure (http://www.pcguide.com/proc/setup/hdd-c.html) might help.

Don't worry about all the error messages reported by dosstart.bat, they should be taken care of by the format and reinstall. Once you get the machine to boot to a floppy and format the drive you should be in good shape.

If you have problems and can't format the hard drive, let us know.



Well, I did a memory scan...and changed some setting in CMOS that were incorrect...found out that my boot disk was not being detected...tried to to a install from it, and found out my hard drive was shot...so it is at the puter doctor as I type, getting its ailments cured. Thanks guys, for you help. Cammy