My Win98se hard drive crashed. It can boot to the command line but it can't boot to Windows because it complains that GDI.EXE is bad. I tried the known fixes: copy new system fonts to the font folder and one or two others. Nothing works. I wanted to install WinME just to fix things but setup found various problems with the file system. It copied a backup of the MBR among other things. Then it complained about various files and folders being the wrong size so I let it start fixing them but got nervous and stopped. Here's why:
I can see all of the files when I do DIR. When I use TYPE to display txt files I can see them just fine. Word files I copied to a WinXP machine are fine too. A password file made by Password Safe wouldn't open so I'm guessing that some files are damaged, some aren't. I'm worried that if I let ME "fix" things it might just finish trashing the HD, destroying the files that are still good. Is this possible/likely?
The old HD has almost 10GB of data on it so I don't want to use floppies to transfer files!
I'm expecting a new WinXp machine next week or so and when it comes I'm going to try adding the old drive to it as a second drive to facilitate copying. I don't want to wait until that machine arrives however. I purchased a cheap XP machine to hold me over that I intend to return to the store so I can't open it up, breaking the seal on the case.
Is there anyway I can transfer files from the old Win98se machine to the temporary WinXP machine? The old machine does not have a CD burner. The new machine does. I tried using WinXP networking and a crossover Ethernet cable but that requires that the 98 machine run a setup disk that contains a program that cannot be run from the commandline. All of the USB keychain "hard drive" gizmos I've seen require a driver to work on 98 machines and I'm assuming I can't install the driver on a half dead machine I can only get to the command line.
Anybody have any ideas on this?
Thanks.
I can see all of the files when I do DIR. When I use TYPE to display txt files I can see them just fine. Word files I copied to a WinXP machine are fine too. A password file made by Password Safe wouldn't open so I'm guessing that some files are damaged, some aren't. I'm worried that if I let ME "fix" things it might just finish trashing the HD, destroying the files that are still good. Is this possible/likely?
The old HD has almost 10GB of data on it so I don't want to use floppies to transfer files!
I'm expecting a new WinXp machine next week or so and when it comes I'm going to try adding the old drive to it as a second drive to facilitate copying. I don't want to wait until that machine arrives however. I purchased a cheap XP machine to hold me over that I intend to return to the store so I can't open it up, breaking the seal on the case.
Is there anyway I can transfer files from the old Win98se machine to the temporary WinXP machine? The old machine does not have a CD burner. The new machine does. I tried using WinXP networking and a crossover Ethernet cable but that requires that the 98 machine run a setup disk that contains a program that cannot be run from the commandline. All of the USB keychain "hard drive" gizmos I've seen require a driver to work on 98 machines and I'm assuming I can't install the driver on a half dead machine I can only get to the command line.
Anybody have any ideas on this?
Thanks.
