Win98's OTHER Restart button

[sofaspud]

Recently my Win98 PC crashed to a self-reboot. When it started back up, it went to a simple gray dialog box, informing me that a
bad file was found and restored from the system backups, and supplying a single 'Restart' button. Didn't look good and got worse
when every boot attempt went to that same screen, in a maddening circle. I could get to a command prompt, though.
Skip ahead to my 3rd foray, when I'd vowed to take the time to make good headway or seriously consider wiping the drive clean.
Older machine, pretty good backups, no files too critical to lose. I poke around using DOS dir looking for something unusual.
BOOTLOG.TXT might help here, but I realize I have logging disabled. So I enable it and reboot. Machine goes right to the desktop
and I haven't had a problem since. My best guess is there was a problem related to the swap file, but the log reads fine of course.
So I may never know for sure, but I've confirmed that I'm not ready to give up my D-sub comm ports and legacy software.

[Janitor Tzap]

Hmm.....

One big problem with Win98x is file fragmentation.
If you let defragmenting go for to long, it has a tendency to cause system and driver files to get corrupted.

Note: Win98x comes with a file restore, or replace utility.
It should be under System Tools.
You can use it to replace damaged drivers.

Do a reboot, and press F5 to get into SafeMode.
Open the Dos Prompt window and run CHKDSK /F.
You may get a message saying it wants to run it during the next Boot up.
If it does, go head and say yes, and let it do the CHKDSK the next time it boots.

Note: You can also run Scandisk /F and this should do the same thing.

Once it's done fixing it.
Do a file clean up.
Basically your going to clean out: *.CHK, *.TMP, and cache files from your browser, or browsers if you are using something other than IE.
When that's done, do a defrag of the hard drive.

Another thing that causes problems is the registry.
As you ad more programs, patches, add-ons, etc....
It gets bloated, or corrupted.
{Trying to repair the Registry is not something a novice should attempt!}

I would suggest you find a good utility program that addresses all of these issues.

Note: FixIt Utilities, I found worked really well at repairing files, and cleaning out junk.
The last version that was Win98x compatible was version 7.

You can look around the web, and see if you can find something similar.

Good Luck!


Signed: Janitor Tzap

[sofaspud]

I feared becoming long-winded so I left out parts of the story. What actually happened was the PC crashed, gave me a
bit of a problem, but then I was able to get to Safe Mode and run scan and defrag. Got it to reboot normally but later
the same session it crashed for good. Another brief sit-down with it got me nowhere. I was determined the third time.
And lucky, too.
I've yet to give FixIt a try, but I found the download. I'm pretty good about file maintenance, if only because I've
experienced these sudden quirks and crashes before. I've done a complete reinstall 2 or 3 times before (over 10 yrs) on
this machine; might be time another. I still like Win98 enough that it's not much bother. This PC has some seniority but
is now 3rd in line to my Vista and Win7 PCs, so a reinstallation gets even easier.

[Janitor Tzap]

Hmmm.........

Have you run a hard drive format repair utility like Spinrite?
I've done this for many hard drives with good success in recovering and repairing the format.

Thou....
How old is the computers Hard Drive?
I've had older drives start to fail {6 years or older}, from head crashes.
Because the magnetic coating on the disk was shedding off.

Way to check this:
Run a THROUGH ScanDisk on the drive,
and look for areas that have been locked off.
When you looking at the finished log.
If there are more than 5% of the disk coming up with bad errors.
Run the format repair utility program, and see if it is just a weak format in those areas.

If that doesn't help.
It's time to backup everything you want off that old hard drive, and start looking for a replacement drive.


Signed: Janitor Tzap