Win 98

[wooorish]

When I turn on my computer, it freezes before entering to the operating system. And when I try to download a new operating system, it won't respond from the CD-ROM. What could be the problem?

[wooorish]

It's windows 98.

It doesn't boot with the safe mode too. By the way What's Device Mangler?

[BFlurie]

Yea, Qball, what's Device Manager -- er, Mangler?

[qball]

Oh boy....

Device Mangler, is exactly that. It is the wizard in Win9X that allows one to view/add/administer/delete devices from one's computer. It can cause mucho heartache, and be the solution to many a probblems.

Right Click My Computer, Properties, choose Device Mangler tab. Iffin you see any bolded exclamation marks, you need too find what the problem is... But, we can't even get that far yet, so...

Anyway, iffin you can't get into safe mode (a bad thing in the Winders world), try the step by step confirmation. You should find a line in autoexec.bat or config.sys that is hosing you. Once you find said line, your gonna have to do the below to fix it.

If that doesn't work, you need your winders recovery disk and you need to boot to floppy and find out what in your autoexec.bat and config.sys is bombing on you.

It's been awhile, but boot to floppy, then on the command line

C:
ren autoexec.bat autoexec.tmp
ren config.sys config.tmp


Iffin those filenames are in use, choose some extension that will work, but remember what it is, as you may want to find the problem, fix the file and restore. They are needed iffin you use DOS mode and may contain some settings for winders, but they aren't necessary for your problem or to boot.

Then remove floppy and ctrl-alt-del or reset or power down, 10 sec, power up.

Hopefully winders boots, else go thru whole safe mode, step by step confirmation again.

[This message has been edited by qball (edited 06-27-2000).]

[qball]

What OS?

Iffin microsoft Win9X, you can try a few things. Right after (I mean RIGHT after) the mem test, hit F8 to bring up the boot menu. You may choose Safe Mode and see if it boots to safe mode (then you can use the Hardware Mangler to find the offending device).

Or you can run the Step by Step confirmation and determine what part of the start up fails. When you do step by step, and find it bombs on loading winders drivers, you will need to boot into safe mode and find the problem in Device Mangler.

[wooorish]

I did step by step configuration and it stops when it's trying to get to win step. Now what am I supposed to do next? I would appreciate for your help.