Windows 98 emm386 and win.com MISSING?!?!

[jascra]

I have an IBM thinkpad with windows 98 installed. A program simant(which is a dos progam) has been downloaded onto the machine, and now windows does not work. The errors I originally got were:
emm386 not installed - unable to set page frame address
Expanded memory services unabailable
Too many parameters
Crystalware sound fusion inialization utility
Dos error 2: no such file or directory.
And the machine would keep restarting from this point, and never load
I booted from a startup disk, and was able to edit config.sys which I rem out the first lineos=single
and I rem out autoexec.bat's lines calling simant

I reinstalled win98, and at first it worked, and then second time, I shut down and reloaded, now I can't get into windows and get these errors:
C:\win98\himem.sys missing or corrupted
cannot find win.com

I was able to copy himem.sys from startup disk, but cannot get win.com back. I do not have a win.bak
I saw on these forums to do a startup from a, then fdisk /mbr and the sys c:.....but that does nothing for me.

WHat happened to my win.com??
Is it possible that I have a virus??

THanks in advance

 

[gargouille]

Probably means (IMHO) your hard drive is heading south and taking things with it when it goes...sound familiar?
Try downloading your HD mfr.'s diagnostics and run it on the drive.
You can also use a boot disk from another 98 machine to (hopefully) boot to DOS and use the diagnostics.
(or if you happen to have a dos boot disk)

 

[jascra]

I reinstalled windows 98 again, and was able to get into windows. I still get the error when starting windows:
emm386 not installed - unable to set page frame address
What would cause this?

 

[gargouille]

1st of all, this is NOT needed at all...and most installs of the OS don't even use config.sys...but that's where it's coming from. *Maybe another application installed it.
Do a start/run/sysedit and look at the startup stuff...where you find the call for EMM386 edit it with REM at the first of the line and save the file...exit/reboot/hopefully it will have gone away.
AS for why...*

Did some looking at groups.google.com and found:

<<Message 3 in thread
From: Kevin Duncan (kduncan@together.net)
Subject: Re: EMM386 Not Installed - Unable to set page frame base address


View this article only
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pc-clone.dell
Date: 2000/01/28

some snipped

Dear Mr. Duncan,
In order to allow EMM386 to allocate a contiguous 64K page frame, do the following:
1. In Windows, click on START | RUN. In the &quot;Open&quot; box, type:
SYSEDIT and click OK.
2. The System Configuration Editor will appear with the
C:\AUTOEXEC.BAT file in the foreground window.

NOTE: If the message &quot;C:\AUTOEXEC.BAT Cannot open this file&quot; appears, click OK.

3. Click on the &quot;X&quot; in the upper-right hand corner of the
C:\AUTOEXEC.BAT window. The C:\CONFIG.SYS window will now be in the foreground.
4. Modify the line &quot;DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\EMM386.EXE&quot; to read:
DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\EMM386.EXE M6 I=E000-E3FF
5. Click on &quot;File&quot; in the System Configuration Editor menu, then click on &quot;Save&quot;.
6. Exit the System Configuration Editor. >>>

 

[gargouille]

If you can't make heads of tails of it...rename config.sys to config.old, save and reboot.
The error message should go away.