Hangs with scanreg

[JillC]

The PC won't start up - comes with errors and an instruction to run scanreg /fix to repair the system registry but it just hangs and goes nowhere.

I can't get it to reinstall Win98, start in Safe Mode or anything. If I start it from the Startup Disk it can't find the CDROM. What do I do now?

:-(

 

[legend2b4]

well the first thing is as the machine post hit del or whatever your MOBO tells you and see that the bios is detecting your HD and CDROM
load bios defalts save and reboot

 

[JillC]

It finds the HDD but can't load the driver for the CDROM even though it's still located in the same folder.

 

[aplusdude]

Go to

http://www.bootdisk.com/original.htm

and get the boot disk for your OS. All have univ. CD drivers included.

Once you boot the PC with the floppy and get to the A:\ prompt, switch to c:\windows\options\cabs and then type scanreg.exe

(this is where scanreg is located on my PC)

Try to restore the registry before formatting and reinstalling your OS.

 

[JillC]

Are we talking at cross purposes? Am I missing something?

I did a search and found some comments on this forum that scanreg can take up to 2 hours, so as I didn't think I'd given it much more than an hour before, I decided to try it again. From the Command Prompt I ran SCANREG /OPT /FIX and after a couple of hours it was still sitting there saying "rebuilding system registry" so I went home.

I've now come back to the office and it's been "rebuilding" for 18 hours!

This is a 100MHz PC with only 16Mb of RAM, but still ..... seems a bit too long to wait. :-(

I have a boot disk, aplusdude. I can get to the command prompt. I also have a startup disk but this doesn't load the CDROM drivers. I don't know if these files are corrupted or whether it's just the registry. The system.dat is(about) 3,787,00 Kb whereas on this machine I'm using it is 7533Kb. So this is why I'm assuming it IS the registry which is stuffed.

What should I do now? >:-<

 

[gargouille]

You might try that old Win95 trick of renaming system.dat to system.old and user.dat to user.old and then renaming system.da0 to system.dat and user.da0 (these are zeroes, remember?) to user.dat and cross your fingers when you ask it to reboot.
scanreg /restore doesn't offer you some goodness?

 

[JillC]

Well, gargouille, trouble is I don't seem to have a system.da0 or user.dat or user.da0 file. I do have a user.bad file also user.pwl and user.acl

Yes, I tried scanreg /restore but as with /fix, I didn't leave it running for more than an hour. Would it take a long time too?

What should I do now? Would these files be hidden? or located somewhere else other than the windows directory?

 

[legend2b4]

Right. If you can get to BIOS Set-up at POST then the bios will find BOTH the hard drive and the CD-Rom..
if not then the prob is not your hard drive alone

at Post go into the bios set-up by hitting DEL and load bios defalts

reboot

again into bios set-up and goto hard drivr auto detect

reboot

start from the boot dist and first see if it loads the cd-rom driver

 

[JillC]

Why am I doing this legend2b4 ?

 

[legend2b4]

if you are BOOTING from a start up floppy and you carn't detect your CD-ROM then the prob is not simply the hard drive

I was trying to get some INFO from you

whatever

 

[fedto]

JillC,
What this sounds like is the regestry files are stiing in bad sectors on the hard drive. Boot up with the boot disk, run scandisk and when prompted, perform a full scan in which it will check the integrety of the hard drive. If there is any problems with bad sectors, it should find them and map around them. Then run the scanreg /fix. If this does the same as before, it looks like it's time to fdisk the partion and start all over.

fedto

 

[gargouille]

Hi JillC:

Has been too long since I worked with the kludge, but I'd suspect the files are hidden and you'll need the
attrib(space)-h(space)-r(space)-s(space)-a(space)*.*
command at the beginning to see and manipulate them.
Hope my memory serves me well enough to be of some help to you!
Sorry I left out a very important step.
scanreg(space)/restore
should immediately bring up a dialog box with choices of .bin files to restore...
fedto's post has merit, but again, the waiting while it completes the scan!
As in &quot;Dune&quot;, &quot;waiting is&quot;!

 

[legend2b4]

I'm Sorry?????

I'm I missing something here. Did you or did you not say:-

I can't get it to reinstall Win98, start in Safe Mode or anything. If I start it from the Startup Disk it can't find the CDROM. What do I do now?

If your IDE channel is not reading the cd-rom...why would you bleive anything it reports about the hard drive??????

running scandisk no doubt with AUTO FIX ERRORS turned on is just making things worse

FDISK ?????

 

[JillC]

Thanks guys for all these suggestions, but still getting nowhere.

Firstly, fedto and legend2b4, the first thing I did was run a full scan on the hard disks. I've got Drive C, D and H (compressed drive).

The 2nd thing I did was run a diagnostic program - it's only an evaluation copy so it keeps dropping out on me however it reported that the hard disk was fine, so was CDROM and everything else I checked. So in my own mind I had eliminated hardware faults and decided it was a corrupted registry (as per the error message).

This is an upgrade from Win95 and so the attempt to reinstall Win98 upgrade runs into trouble when trying to read the system registry.

The CDROM is not found with the Win98 startup disk. But it is found with the boot disk and with the Win95 startup disk and with my diagnostic disk. So this is why I was hesitant to start fiddling with the BIOS, legend2b4.

gargouille, it has taken me some time to find my old DOS book with the instructions on xcopy, so I'm trying to copy some folders across to the 2nd HDD in the assumption that eventually I'm going to have to wipe C: and start again. I'll have a go at that attrib thing too.

If that doesn't work, I guess all that's left is to reformat and reinstall Win95 and then Win98.

Or I could drop it from a height ..... %-)

 

[JillC]

Just a quick update.

legend2b4: In the help file of Windows98 Startup Disk (the one that didn't load the CDROM driver) it says that the real-mode drivers do not necessarily work with all CDROMs and that if it fails to use the manufacturer's driver. So that answered my question as to why it couldn't find the CDROM with that disk.

gargouille: I had no joy with any of your suggestions. But while I was copying files across to the 2nd HDD I noticed that the cab files were there - didn't need the CDROM AFTER ALL!!!!! So I ran setup, it reinstalled Win98 and then after that it came up with a message box to say that it had found an old registry which it could restore. I clicked YES and the thing was revived, all programs and data intact.

Still slow as a wet week of course .......

Thanks for the suggestions anyway, folks.
Jill.