Win 98 Recovery

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Got home from work today & my dad says 'My computer's not working...'

Error, Win.com is missing

There also seems to be a problem with the registry (perhaps because there isn't one, see below) as the boot menu states registry may be damaged/corrupted, chose command prompt only and run scanreg (which doesn't run)

Also missing (seemingly), is most of the Windows directory.
Using the command prompt, the Windows dir contains 3 folders (Alluse~1, or allusers, desktop, and temp), and 2 files.

All the other data seems to be there.

If we (by which, I mean me) reinstall Win98 (have never installed Win on top of another, always format first usually) will it wipe all the other data? Not sure how recently this stuff was backed up, and what could have caused it?

Any other ways of fixing this? I've got no problem extracting win.com from the Win98 CD, but with all those files missing, i'm pretty sure that's not going to fix it.
Cheers. (And sorry about all the brackets!)

Next job - secretly buy him a copy of XP Pro with his own credit card...

 

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Hey Gaz,

With win98 youcan just run an install over the top of the old one, and it will overwrite the C:\WINDOWS folder, leaving all other files intact. Not the ideal scenario, but in answer to your question - yes.

HTH

 

My old Windows 98 system puked on me several years ago. I used the original installation disk to do the recovery. Didn't lose any data.

 

Cheers guys, thought that might work but didn't want to wipe all his photo's!

Any clues on what triggered it?

 

Who knows. Sometimes, files become corrupted. I hate to say it, but nothing is forever in a computer. Some virus or piece of spyware could have corrupted a registry setting and let's face it; Windows 98 is not particularly stable. Like I said, I had a very similar experience on a 98 machine and never had a clue as to the cause. Just make sure you have current antivirus, antispyware, keep the security update current, try some sort of firewall...and hope for the best.

 

If anything out of the ordinary happens with a PC, always suspect a virus and or malware. Once you have convinced yourself that the system is clean, then try other things.

Also, you may have lost clusters on your HDD, that might explain why so many things have vanished. Try running chkdsk or scandisk or some other disk checking utility from a bootable DOS disk.

You don't want to go to the trouble of re-installing if it is going to happen again.

Pete