What have I done?

[nodnerb2]

Hi,

The Machine is running
P3 733
Win ME
Abit SE6 Mobo
512Megs Ram

This machine isn't a recent build as you can probably tell from what's in it.

This evening I replaced the Sony CRX 140 E CDRW with a Sony DWU 14 A DVD RW and the no name model A 50 T CD ROM with a Sony CRX 300 E CDRW/DVD ROM.

Afairly straight forward process you might well say and straightforward it appeared to be. The PC restarted with no probs. I put the Nero 6 CD into both drives and it auto started so I assumed all was fine. I installed Nero 6 and the machine wanted to reboot to finish the install. When it restarted it came up with an error message" unable to load explorer.exe" reinstall Windows.

I thought(hoped) this wasn't the case and rebooted got same message. Rebooted with CTRL Key down and same again.

Can I just boot to a floppy and reinstall Windows over what is there already?

If anyone has any clues on what caused this and suggestions as to the best course of action I would be very grateful.

Cheers

Nodnerb2

I would try going in under Safe Mode and uninstalling Nero 6 first. That might save you some time and aggrevation.

To answer your question though, yes, you can just install over what you have. You would need to reload any programs you had before, but you'd keep all your settings and data.

[John Prophet]

Well, unfortunately it is ME whicn means you have no true DOS mode to boot into.

But, of course WinME has "system restore"...can you boot into safe mode?? If so, do it and then use system restore to roll it back to before the Nero install.

Start/programs/accesories/system tools/system restore


Or...go to a W98 machine, make a boot floppy, put "scanreg.exe" on the floppy....and boot to the floppy and run "scanreg /restore"...it will give you 5 dates of registry backups to choose from....choose one and restore it and see what happens.

Scanreg /restore has saved me more than once.

JP

[nodnerb2]

Hi,

It comes up with the same error when trying to start in Safe Mode so I guess it's reinstall and see what still functions.

If the worst comes to the worst I will drop anopther HDD in install Windows and then drag the crap I want over to the new drive then format the one that is now the C Drive. The only stuff I will actually loose will be todays work if I can't salvage any of it as it backs up at 0200 hrs

Cheers

Nodnerb2

[darkheart]

Do yourself a favour get rid of ME its a nightmare and buy windows XP or 2000.

[nodnerb2]

Hi,

Here's the result of what I did.

I went ahead and reinstalled Win ME over what I had. It all seemed to go ok until it got around to detecting Hardware etc and then the BSOD's appeared at every opportunity.

I ended up sticking a new 40 Gb drive that I had earmarked for something else into it. I partitioned it 6 times so now I have a different section for the OS,Program Files, Download Stuff, Pictures, Work Stuff, and 1 as yet unassigned. I thought about using this as the Backup destination but think I will continue to use a second separate HDD for this so that if the HDD does ever go completely **** up then I will still have some data left.

I have the old C Drive hooked up as the slave and I just didn't realise just how much crap I have added to this thing in the 2.5 yrs it's been together. I found out how much crap is on it when having a look to see what is worth dragging to somewhere else.

Following my initial outburst about this problem the wife calmly informed me that this machine has been giving quite a few BSOD' s recently while I have been away. I got one myself when shutting it down to fit the Hardware which upon reflection I should have checked out further before adding things to it.

I think I have learn't a couple of good lessons here.

Cheers

Nodnerb2