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windows 98 won't load to desktop

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apesheet

Technical User
Jan 28, 2005
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So I came home today and the computer was left on by my mom and everything was working fine. Then, I couldn't click on anything on the desktop and I figured it was probably something that had to do with the memory because... well that PC runs on a 433mHz Celeron with 256MB of RAM and it's always slow and odd. I restarted and when it loaded past scandisk blah blah, the background was a lighter green like in safe mode and "everything" was a little larger than normal and the only thing that was on the screen was the windows 98 setup wizard. I tried starting up in safe mode and the only thing displayed were the Display settings and when I tried ctrl alt del explorer.exe had an error as well as another error that I can't remember. I REALLY don't want to lost the hard drive so if anyone can help me that would be awesome!
 
Try reloading the video card driver. It may not be the cause of all of your problems, but it sounds like it is at least some of the problem. Or...go into device manager and remove the video driver and see if it will reload it c correctly. When you see the display setting property as soon as you open up into safe mode, it's telling you that something is wrong with your display adapter.
 
If you have data on the drive not backed up, I'd back it up now (probably best to slave the drive in another machine to do this). It may just have lost its display driver - but better safe than sorry.

Then I'd download and run drive manufacturer's diagnostic to check the drive out.

PS - any history of problems on this machine?
Anti-virus installed?
Regular spyware check?
 
I agree with wolluf..set the drive as a slave to another bootable drive, and copy your important data NOW. Then do what you gotta do...perhaps reinstall Win98...that used to be a weekly ritual around my house!

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What do you do when you turn the computer on and it loads up and the windows wont come on? The start menu wont come on and the windows wont come on?
 
neobuba - please start a new thread for your question (I assume you're decribing a problem you have). Also, some history/background to the problem would be useful.
 
I don't think anything except the suggestion to boot off another HDD and pull off the valuables is going to help here. The entire windows environment is invisible.

However:

If you can get to DOS Command Prompt startup, run

scanreg /restore

and pick any earlier date. Unless there is actual hardware or software damage, this should work.

If you don't get the standard single "beep" when starting the machine, you may have memory or other hardware problems, e.g.
 
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