Repairing Win98Se WITHOUT reinstalling? 2

[Ch3apSk8]

A friend of mine was trying to install a 2GB Sandisk Cruzer flash drive on his Windows 98SE machine. After attempting to install several drivers without success, he removed several files in different locations on his hard drive (that he believed were the drivers he'd installed), and now when he tries to start the system, he gets error messages of "Cannot find a device file that may be needed to run windows or a windows application", then a list of about 15 files mostly ending in .VXD.
System won't boot into safemode, and scanreg /fix AND /restore did not work. On /fix, it said that some files could not be repaired. Need help.
Is there a way to repair Windows 98 SE without reinstalling the OS and losing all the data on the machine?
Any help at this point would be greatly appreciated.

 

[edfair]

An "over the top" reinstall will do what you want. It is a reinstall but doesn't overwrite programs or data. Just be sure to to put the new install in the same place the old install lives.
And if you put the istall stuff on the hard drive and install from there it goes much faster and he won't need the CD to find drivers as SE will know where the install stuff came from.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[HalComps]

if you go here you can get a boot disk that will help you replace the files needed to boot windows back up.

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

and here goes through "how to"

http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-6349_11-5032921.html

 

[sggaunt]

The msinfo utility found in
Accessories / system tools/ system information
Includes a 'system file checker' that can help to put things back to normal.


Steve [The sane]: Delphi a feersum engin indeed.

 

[tonydd]

I use 98se but couldn't find the system file checker you refer to.

 

[edfair]

I suspect that what was mentioned was \windows\system\sfc.exe but I don't know if it will run from the underlying DOS. Normally is called from start>run>sfc but will run from a DOS window.

 

[Infield]

I have a similar but much worse problem. I have a PII/333MHz desktop. After upgraded to Win98SE, I added a hard drive[partition D,E,F,G] and WinXP as dual OS. The Win98 became unbootable after I closed hard drive C under BIOS by mistake!! I copied all folders/files to D(FAT32)under WinXP and formated C. I just recognize that no WINDOWS folder on D!! How can I make the old programs working without reinstalling the original software? There is a folder _winbk and I have a Win98SE boot disk.

I would appreciate all the help!

 

[edfair]

You may want to start a new thread as a lot of people ignore older threads.

You probably don't have any choice but to reinstall SE if you want it to work again. There are things that were put in the registry pointing to C: and even if you were to get the 98 files properly located on D: those pointers will kill you.

And a reinstall of SE is going to force a repair install of XP since the boot stuff that points to XP is going to be wiped out.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[Infield]

Are there anything unmovable when copying all(?) the folders/files from C: to D: and then back to C:? I used WinXP to move the folders of Win98 between the FAT32 hard drives.

I experienced WinXP on F: was down when I reinstalled Win98 on C: but I don't need to keep anything on F:.

 

[wolluf]

Infield - not quite sure what you've done. If you have a complete backup of your original 98 installation, then you can get it back up (probably). Here's a method I've used (though not for many years).

1. Boot from win98 boot floppy with just the drive you want 98 on connected (formatted active fat32 partititon).

2. From the dos prompt, type sys C:. This will make the drive bootable.

3. Connect that drive to machine with the 98 backup. Copy the backup to the drive - agreeing to overwrite when prompted. I'd do this using explorer, make sure you have it set to show hidden and system files.

4. Put the drive back in its home machine - it should boot to 98.

 

[porov]

Hey wolluf that really worked i also had this problem, thanks.

 

[porov]

Hey wolluf that really worked i also had this problem, thanks.