REQ: Advice Fixing Old Windows Problem.

interested

interested

Gawd
Joined
Feb 3, 2006
Messages
795
Hello.
I am trying to help out a neighbour of ours, he is a senior citizen, who has a problem with his old PC.
Now my problem in trying to fix his PC is that it is much older then the usual pc's I have worked on over the last few years.

He is unfortunately still using Windows 98, and I dont even think its SE.
Had he asked me to fix it 8 years ago I would have had no problem doing so, as all the tips and tricks for that os would still be in my head.
However I have become spoiled with windows xp, and thus now find it dificullt to dig up old apps and tools I had which worked for 98.

Now normally I am pretty good at solving PC problems however its been quite a few years since I have had to work on any pc this old so I could use some advice on the following problem.

Ok here is his problem.
When his PC boots up , it shows the win98 login logo, then it gets to a blank desktop, and an error pops up stating that a problem occured in explorer.exe.
And thats it, nothing shows up on his desktop and nothing can be done other then ctrl alt del and restarting pc.

So it looks like explorer.exe is corrupted.( I am thinking bad sector on his HD, as I doubt very much he has a virus as he does not use internet )

Now normally what I would do is use a boot cd, or usb flash drive, and load up ERD commander or other similar boot recovery utility package or linux package, then run some apps to replace the system file in question ( explorer.exe.).

Now my problem is that his pc is so old that I cannot even boot from CD (let alone usb), as his bios only allows HD or Floppy boot.

Now I can F8 and boot into DOS with CD Rom support, however I cant find any old win98 recovery utility CD's that can be run from dos without the bios booting it first.

Thus can someone recommend any old similar recovery utilities that I can freely download which I can then run in dos, or any similar utilities which I can boot from floppy and works with windows98.

I am also going to try extracting the explorer.exe from a windows 98 cab file and try just manually replacing the file from within DOS. However I doubt that will work.

So any other ideas or old win98 tools that anyone can think of is well apreciated, as I just cant find my old win98 stuff and my memory on fixing issues with this old os is not that fresh.

Thanks in advance.
 
First try booting into safe mode... if the system boots into safe mode with no issues then that's a good sign. If the explorer.exe issue continues within safe mode that's a very bad sign.

If no problems within safe mode then adjust MSConfig so all non-microsoft stuff is disabled then reboot. If this works then use MSConfig to slowly re-enable stuff followed by rebooting so you can pinpoint the exact issue.

If problems continue within safe mode then the system will probably need to be formatted and reinstalled as this is most likely either a hardware issue or computer virus. Explorer.exe failing is linked to a handful of computer viruses... I believe this is the cause where I recommend taking out the harddrive and mounting it on your system as a secondary where it can be scanned and cleaned by anti-virus software.
 
Thanks for your suggestions.

I had already tried safe mode, and the exact same explorer.exe error occurs.
Thus the reason i do beleive its a corrupt file either due to bad sector on HD, or virus.

I still doubt its a virus given he does not use internet, however I may try removing his HD and scanning it in another system as a last effort, as I would prefer not to open up his old case unless necessary.

I also tried step by step, and i read the bootlog.txt and i tried limited denials of loading various drivers during the step by step, all with no luck.

So if anyone knows of any old win98 utilities that might help in system file recovery, and works in DOS (without CD booting from Bios) or some utility that boots from floppy. please let me know
 
Xcopy would let you access the drive and copy files off of it. Win98 doesn't use NTFS, so DOS-level access is there.
 
have you googled the error message?
does the background appear before the error message?
can you defrag and/or delete temporary internet files despite the error message?
can you boot safe mode--command line only and wholesale delete the
RECYCLED folder?
.......................................
I would not be unoptimistic, since I fine-tuned windows98 to operate almost
as good as my FreeBSD install for a few tasks (browsing) (newgroup reader)
etc but there are a lot of detail to take care of, whole sites were devoted to
modifications back when win98 was the latest.
.......................................
it can even run 2 firewalls AND 2 antivirus at once if it has enough memory once
"fixed" if it can be
......................................
 
Bootdisk.com will get you a workable floppy boot and you can go from there.

Wasn't there a way to F8 your way to a command prompt? That sounds familiar. You could at least do a scan for unreadable sectors and such.
 
jb_hafo said:
have you googled the error message?
does the background appear before the error message?
can you defrag and/or delete temporary internet files despite the error message?
can you boot safe mode--command line only and wholesale delete the
RECYCLED folder?
.......................................
I would not be unoptimistic, since I fine-tuned windows98 to operate almost
as good as my FreeBSD install for a few tasks (browsing) (newgroup reader)
etc but there are a lot of detail to take care of, whole sites were devoted to
modifications back when win98 was the latest.
.......................................
it can even run 2 firewalls AND 2 antivirus at once if it has enough memory once
"fixed" if it can be
......................................
Click to expand...


Thanks for you suggestions.

Yes I have googled the error message, and unfortunatly it is so generic that I get millions of hits which dont help any with the situation.

A plain desktop background (plain green screen) with no desktop icons or start menue does show up right before the error. Once the error shows up nothing else loads.

I cant seem to do anything while in the above mode, so I cannot defrag or do any of your suggestions.

I will try your suggestion of deleting the recycled folder while in DOS.
No idea how that will solve anything however its easy enough to do.

arkamw said:
Bootdisk.com will get you a workable floppy boot and you can go from there.

Wasn't there a way to F8 your way to a command prompt? That sounds familiar. You could at least do a scan for unreadable sectors and such
Click to expand...

Thanks for the link.
I can get into DOS just fine, by using F8 or a windows 98 boot disk.
My problem is that when i get into DOS I dont have any win98 Recovery Utilities which can run natively within DOS.

Without any win98 recovery utilities which would scan system files and replace corrupted ones, all I can do in DOS is manual things like replace or move files, or run simple things like scandisks, none of which so far has solved the problem.
I did do a scandisk and it did not help with this problem.

Thanks for the suggestions so far guys.
 
Can you run SFC /scannow from a DOS prompt? You may not be able to (don't remember). If it tries to run, it may look for a memory manager as well.

If you haven't tried, I suppose you could always try extracting a copy of explorer.exe from one of the cabs and hoping that worked. Biggest problem I'd see with that is making sure you get the right version.

Not a lot of stuff out there for win98 anymore.
 
arkamw said:
Can you run SFC /scannow from a DOS prompt? You may not be able to (don't remember). If it tries to run, it may look for a memory manager as well.

If you haven't tried, I suppose you could always try extracting a copy of explorer.exe from one of the cabs and hoping that worked. Biggest problem I'd see with that is making sure you get the right version.

Not a lot of stuff out there for win98 anymore.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately SFC /scannow is only for windows xp.
I have solved other problems in windows xp using that before, too bad its not available in win98.

I plan on trying "scanreg /restore" in DOS on his win98 and see if that works.
Maybe thats the old equivalent of SFC /scannow.

I was also initially planning on trying to extracting the explorer.exe from the win98 cabfiles on his win98 CD, and replacing the file in DOS. My neighbour did not have internet access and I had to figure out which cab file and needed Google to help me with that so i will try that this weekend.

Thanks for the suggestions.
 
It didn't sound right but, according to several websites, SFC actually did exist in 98 and subsequent editions. Problem is, I don't think you can get to it from a command prompt. So that idea's right out... my fault.

I think it was scanreg that I was thinking of. Let us know how it turns out.
 
Well i went over to his house today, and tried a few more things, and fixed his computer.

The extracting of explorer from the cab files did not work.

The "scanreg /restore" did work ;)

His PC is now working again.

Hopefully it stays that way, as i dont want to continue to troubleshot win98.

Only during times like these do I notice how much easier it is to fix problems in XP, Vista.. and bascially all modern OS's in comparison to old Win98.
Same is true of modern PC's which conveniently boot from CD and USB, vs old hardware like his which could not do either.

Thanks again for all the suggestions you guys gave.
 
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