Windows 98 Boot Problem

[sbox]

:confused:
I recently turned my computer on and windows 98 failed to load. I got a boot failure command. It doesn't even try to load Windows 98 it just says boot failure. In other words nothing, nada, zilch.

Luckily I have another windows 98 hard drive (usually just a slave) which is how I am able to communicate with y'all now.
Unfortunately the slave drive is tiny and is just for such emergencies. Succinctly, I need to get my big drive back up.

I checked it from DOS and all looks good. I even ran scandisk and uncovered no problems. I also saw my data by running dir out of DOS.

My thoughts lead me to believe that perhaps the system.ini file on my main drive became corrupted. Do I have to rename an older system003 file, system.ini out of DOS? Or, should I slave the main drive to the small drive and try to fix it out of win 98 or is this solution not likely to get me anywhere?

Any advice is apprecciated. If you think their might be a better solution let me know.

[muchmark]

You could try restoring the registry, boot into safe mode command prompt and type scanreg/restore select an date when it booted ok.

[sbox]

:o

Well, I can't boot into safe mode to try this solution. The boot failure occurs immediately. At first, I thought the drive was fried either through mechanical or electrical failure. However, as I stated previously, I checked all the data through DOS scandisk, and DOS directory.

Since this drive is a couple of years old, I think I will try to slave it to a new drive to retrieve my data.

If anyone know how to restore the operating system without nuking the drive please let me know.

[muchmark]

You could install Win98 over itself or onto a separate directory say Windows_2 without loosing any data.

[skuz]

Use with a bootdisk and try fdisk /mbr

[sbox]

I never thought about installing win 98 over itself or into a new directory. However, it seems like it would work. I wonder if conflicts could arise? I'll mull over this over the Holidays, not really in the mood to work on the old computer. However, isn't it odd, that I'm psyched to work on that new one. Thanks for everybody's help and Merry Christmas.:D

[chris307uk]

installing 98 over the top of 98 works fine dont know how many times i have done it for people with probs missing files ect never failed yet or had any probs as long as the h/d is ok

[elroy]

Even if you install Windows over the old Windows and it doesn't run great you can hook up a slave drive and easily drag your important data onto the extra slave drive, then re-format your "problem" drive and re-install Windows from scratch. This will allow you to easily salvage all of your data. This is one reason I ALWAYS recommend making 2 partitions when installing a drive. This way you just install Windows over the old one long enough to get booted into Windows, drag the data to the 2nd partition and then re-format the 1st partition. Then drag your data back to C again. Solved the problem and didn't even need a 2nd drive.