Win98 desktop wont load..need help...

[John Prophet]

My main comp w98se

hehe. Well, I installed msoft office portfolio..the deal with all the nice little templates etc. It seemed to install ok...didnt ask to reboot which I was surprised about. So I looked in msconfig to see if anything new was in there...there didnt seem to be. So I uncheck "tkbell" (realone spyware) and there was an entry something like wucblahblah...some sort of update thing...I unchecked it...not sure what it was.


Went to reboot...it came up to where I click to log in, I clicked as normal....the systray popped up for one split second but immediately dissappeared and no icons ever showed up....the windows sound was as normal.

I ctrl alt del and nothing was running.

Hmm...ok, no problem, just a freaky boot. So I reboot..same thing.

Hmm..safe mode....same thing. hmmmm

So I did what I always tell others to do..I booted to dos..ran "scanreg /restore"...restored to earlier today......did same thing...restored to yesterday.....same thing. uhoh. Restored to a couple days ago......same thing.


Now what?? It seems to be ok, gets to the logon then after u click "OK" or "cancel" it goes to the blank desktop, no icons, no systray no nuthin.

I did install printer and scanner from another system yesterday without a hitch....using a small passive usb hub...I tried booting with all the usb stuff unplugged...and also with the cat5 pulled.


What now? If I reinstall windows I have to do it booting from the cd.....basically that wipes out my windows that I have now right? What about my other files etc??


Thanks, JP

[Dooin' it]

Hmmm.....don't ya just love it when windows does this?

I think that if you force your computer to boot from CD, (in setup as the first boot device) then I ***think*** that if Windows sees itself already installed, it will ask you if you'd like to "save your current settings" before reinstalling which won't "wipe clean" before it installs itself!!

Again, I'm not positive for 98SE but I just did this with an ME install and it successfully saved all the drivers/printers/updates etc. etc. for me. You could "test" the waters & start to do this & see if it offers the "save current settings" message and cut it short if it doesn't!?!

[John Prophet]

yeah, I remember how 98 always would ask that...I was thinking it just made another windows folder or something....but I also just remembered that since I am a norton ghost junky that I can Ghost it first then play with the reinstall and see whats up.

Man, this bites. WinXP restore function would be nice about now. (that and some backups, arggh)

[Dooin' it]

WinXP restore function would be nice about now

While it sounds so good, I can honestly say that the "restore" function has ticked me off more lately than not. Ask OMAR about the whole......

"....sorry, Windows cannot restore your system to this date....."

It's enough to make you wanna practice field goal kicking with a retail box of MS product!!

[John Prophet]

yeah, my ME used to do that to me..but xp restore has saved my rear also..including on a job where I partially erased a few months worth of financial records.....gulp..I didnt think restore would fix it but it did!...I was sweating bulletsssssssss

[Dooin' it]

LOL!!!!

Thank goodness it worked when you needed it most!!!!

[jagnorm]

Have you tried right clicking on the desk top and checking to see if those settings didn't change?

[John Prophet]

yeah..tried safe mode too.

nada. tried the little "windows" button.

tried looking at a bootlog to see if I could see anything.

grrrrr

[John Prophet]

Does anyone know off hand if I can take the drive and slap it into an xp system as secondary and get info off of it?

Or even put it into a scratch w98 system as secondary?

JP

[no1_vern]

That shell=Explorer can be replaced temporarily with either Winfile.exe shell or Progman.exe. These instructions are for Winfile and will get you in, so that you can replace Explorer with a new copy. That may be the problem, but I would think you'd get an error message. It won't hurt anything to try.

You need to extract a new copy of Explorer.exe. You'll need your OS CD handy, unless you have Cab files on your hard drive, normally in C:\windows\options\cabs.

First, you'll need to edit 'system.ini' in DOS to temporarily replace the Explorer shell with Winfile. Then you can access your start menu. Boot to the command prompt.

At the C:\> prompt (press enter after each line) type:

cd windows
edit system.ini

Now change the shell=explorer.exe to shell=winfile.exe


FROM : http://www.annoyances.org/exec/forum/win98/r1042788572