Win98 boots to C:\ but no further.

[2336]

Folks, I have a friend whose rig boots to a command prompt, but when you type win at the C:\ it says bad command. I've tried copying the sys. files to it but to no avail. He'd like to save the data and files that are on there now. Would loading 98 back over it work? Any help would be much appreciated.

 

[redbeard1]

Renaming win.com at a command prompt is the start of how I reload over the top. I explained it in detail in this link.

A really corrupted load of windows may not recover, even going over the top.

Can you get it to go into safe mode by pressing the F8 key just as it is going past the first bios post screen, and getting the boot menu. If it still drops back to a c: prompt, that is bad.

If he knows what he needs, you may have to pull the hard drive out of his system and put it in as a slave in another system, to get his data off.

Over the top

 

[Abzstrak]

yes, installing onver it may help.... I'd higly suggest saving some time and formatting it and starting over. Maybe consider win2k or XP

 

[2336]

I appreciate the input guys. I ended up running setup again and loaded Win98 over itself and was able to finally get in and his data and files all appeared to be intact. The real kick in the pants is that my friend called after I had got everything up and running and asked me to format the HDD and just reload Win98 fresh! Sheesh!

 

[igiveup]

LMAO Gotta love that. Maybe you should help him by making him do it. You could be cruel and tell him to do it himself and just leave it at that, or you could go over there and make him do it while you are there in case he has any questions, which he will. Thats how I got my mom to stop thinking of me as free tech support. I live an hour away...