98 WONT LOAD - Its a hard one

[Daire]

Help

I'm running Win 98 SE with 128MB and PIII 800Mhz on a HP Vectra VL 400 DT

The PC will not boot up anymore
I keep getting BSOD telling me "VFAT DEVICE INITIALISING FAILED, A DEVICE OR RESOURCE IS NOT PRESENT OR UNAVAILABLE. VFAT CANNOT CONTINUE LOADING SYSTEM HALTED"

I ran scandisk - no errors
I ran HP's diagnostics - no errors
I used Win98 bootup disk - will not load windows
Tried safe mode - FATAL EXCEPTION 0D 0167:00001B01

I don't want to re-install because I'll lose all the apps.

CAN ANYONE HELP WITH THIS ONE? "The more I learn the more I realise how little I know" -- thats what makes it so damn good! ;-)

 

[cdogg]

Go here:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb&3bEN-US&3bq139063

 

[cdogg]

OOPS!! Try this link instead:

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q139/0/63.asp

 

[amandeephunjan]

seems that your drive format is corrupt why not reformat it and do the reinstallation

 

[Daire]

Hi amandeephunjan, I can get to a dos prompt and copy files to a floppy, everything seems to be OK on the hard disk, I really dont want to format and re-install because that sounds like the easy way out. If the problem could be fixed I'd be much happier

Thanks "The more I learn the more I realise how little I know" -- thats what makes it so damn good! ;-)

 

[T0MMY]

why not try installing windows again (without formatting) that way you shouldnt lose anything

 

[cdogg]

Leptonite,

Can you verify that you went to the Microsoft link I posted above and tried their suggestions already?

Tommy's suggestion may also work. However, it is important to note that a "reinstall" without formatting will only replace system files that are either missing or of a different version and/or size. It WILL NOT fix registry entries or applications that could easily be part of the problem.

 

[fedto]

Leptonite,
If you are getting Vfat errors on boot and getting fatal exceptions trying to get into safemode, most likely trying to reinstall will not fix the problem.
It sounds like something has corrupted the FAT on the system and windows is unable to read it. Most commonly caused by a virus or bad hard drive.

You could try booting with the boot disk and going to the C:\ drive and perfroming a fdisk /mbr several times and see if this cures the problem.

My opion is though that even if the fdisk /mbr gets your system to boot, it would be best to fdisk the hdd and start all over.