Win 98 problems

[seanmark2]

I had a Win 98 and a Win XP on a network but the 98 ceased to operate. I would get a message that said something like this " You have a file with to long a name and it cannot be fixed. I took the machine in for repairs and after a short time it was again going. After about two hours it went bad. What happened is I forgot to remove the floppy and the it said remove and push any key. Everything was froze. I took it in again and was told that Win 98 was so corrupted it would have to be replaced and they wanted $140.00. Have any of you had any experience with this type of thing and how difficult is it to replace Win 98

[Bill in SD, CA]

$140 to re-install an OS is a rip.

IMO

If you have your 98 CD you should be able to do it yourself in a couple of hours.

The people here can guide you through the process.

Bill

[PresterJohn]

yep, sounds like a reinstall is in order.

[seanmark2]

I don't know the first thing about reinstalling the program. Can someone please give me a step by step way to do this.
Seanmark2

[John Prophet]

do you have the win98 cd?

just basically start windows...then put the w98 cd in. If it autostarts just cancel out of that. go to "my computer" open it, right click and "open" the w98cd....you will see "setup.exe"...double click that.

[Bovon]

I have been lucky a couple of times letting scandisk run on the drive from DOS. If it has anything to do with screwed up files..chances are scandisk can fix it. If you can get into Win98 in safe mode, you can run SFC (System File Checker) from the start > run menu...which will find missing/corrupt files and allow you to replace them from your Win98CD.

You can get a Win98 boot disk with scandisk (plus other good utilities) from http://www.bootdisk.com/ ... click on the top listing: DOS - Windows 9X/Me/NT/2K/XP Excellent "bootdisks" and on the next page, download (1) Windows 98 Custom, No Ramdrive or (2) Windows 98 SE Custom, No Ramdrive.

These will be executable files. Place a formatted diskette in your A: drive and click open the executable (either boot98c.exe or boot98sc.exe) that will execute onto the floppy disk and create the bootable floppy. You now leave the diskette in the A: drive and boot. This will take you to an A:\> prompt where you will type scandisk C: <enter> Scandisk will run on the C: drive (I am assuming your Windows 98 is on the C: drive) and it will find any errors and ask you if you wish to correct them...say yes. It will also tell you that it is going to make changes to your drive..do you want to save the data. I never do, but you may want to...it can be saved to the root of C: or maybe a floppy diskette.

[Bovon]

Oh...and BTW.. if you try to reinstall Windows on top of itself, it will attempt to install into a new folder called Windows000. Do not allow this to happen, you must force the install to Windows folder only... this will cause the reinstall to overwrite many of the original Windows files...but not all. If you have other applications installed on your computer..or service packs have been added to upgrade the OS, doing a reinstall of Windows will find certain files that have a different date than the one that is being reinstalled...the system will ask you if you want to keep your file since it is more recent (and it will recommend that you keep it) or overwrite/replace it. I always keep the old file because there are usually .DLLs that were upgraded by other applications installed on the computer that Windows runs.

[John Prophet]

well, it will ask something like "do you want to save the old windows install" or something like that..I usually say "no" but bovon is saying "yes" I think...if you say yes I think that is when it will put it in the windows000 folder

[seanmark2]

Hi Bovon
Thank you so much for taking time to give me detailed instructions on how to repair my 98. I will have an opportunity to try this in the next couple of days. I will let you know how it all turns out. Again, THANK YOU.
Seanmark2

[seanmark2]

Hi Bovon
Thank you so much for taking time to give me detailed instructions on how to repair my 98. I will have an opportunity to try this in the next couple of days. I will let you know how it all turns out. Again, THANK YOU.
Seanmark2