I have a horrible feeling (and I hope I'm wrong)

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Of all the headaches I've been having with my old Micron PC lately, today, on four separate occasions, I've gotten virus alerts from Norton. These are usually e-mail attachments and usually sent to my daughter. I typically delete the things and are done with them.

A little while ago, my wife and daughter were working on the PC and my daughter came out to say the "virus thingy" was saying there was a virus. I walked in...saw the usual warning message and deleted the virus. Another came up almost immediately (they were on the internet and I figured the e-mail was doing a periodic download) and I deleted that, too. Then I saw some sort of message saying that I'd successfully deleted an infected win.ini file and would need a replacement.

I checked and sure enough...no win.ini file in C:/WINDOWS (Windows 98SE). I have this horrible feeling I may have done something stupid, but am not sure. I tried researching this on the internet and came up with this:

http://www.computing.net/windows95/wwwboard/forum/144656.html

I hate to say this, but I'm not sure what this all means as far as my system goes. I'll take any opinions you may wish to offer and humbly submit my "expert points" for revocation.

 

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Hi Trip,

You got my curiosity going, it's been so long since I worked on Win98 I didn't know what happened if you lost win.ini in win98, I remember all too well what happened with win 3.x ....a completely snafu system.

So I did a quick install of win98 in vmware and experimented. The win.ini had a load of information in after install about the desktop, various other things and printers. When I zapped win.ini and rebooted win98 created a fresh win.ini from scratch but with a fraction of the information in it. The printers section was missing as well. The printer still showed in the control panel but if I tried to print from notepad the print option was greyed out. So I'd say zapping your win.ini created your printer problem from your other post. I would guess windows will continue to work, it has probably created a few more problems so it would be in your best interests to find a backup if you have one. Reinstalling the printer drivers will cure the printer problem.

 

Ah-Ha! Another project for Sunday. Thanks, Phil. "You da man" .

 

I went to HP's site and downloaded/installed the drivers for the printer. It took quite awhile since I downloaded both the drivers and installation shield. I didn't want to take any chances. I got through the entire thing and finally got an error message saying that it couldn't update the win.ini file (probably because it doesn't exist). I've rebooted the PC several times since zapping win.ini but apparently, it didn't create a new win.ini file. Also, I've been getting periodic Norton alerts about infected win.ini files and infected scrsvr.exe files. This usually happens when I'm on the internet, but has nothing to do with downloading e-mails (it just happened again). I suspect I've got an intruder in my system that keeps popping up at random times.

I'm going to run a virus scan of my system, hope to find and eradicate the intruder, then try to reinstall the win.ini file from the Win98 CD. Any and all feedback regarding this plan is certainly appreciated. Thanks.

 

Hmmm, I reckon I'm wrong already here, but it's a long shot - might be worth a try ...

When you boot to a Win98 boot disk, and do "sys C:", isn't win.ini one of the files replaced on the drive ?

No harm trying :?:

 

Time to back up your data by the sounds of things you may be looking at a re-install quite soon. I would also try updating the virus defs and engine (if you can), disconnecting from the internet and running the fullest scan possible and seeing what that turns up.

HTH

 

Never mind (picture Gilda Radner on Saturday Night Live). Problem solved…but I’m not sure how I did it. I was searching through the Win98 CD for anything with the phrase “win.ini” and came up with a bunch of files. I ran “scanreg” which came up with no errors. I thought this odd so, I removed the cd and ran it again. Same result…no errors. I then did a search specifcally of the C:\Windows file for “win.ini” and immediately came up with the file.

I decided to test this. I’d recently downloaded the set up for installing my printer drivers from HP. I went to where that was stored and ran it again. This time, it went without a hitch (it failed last time because it couldn't locate win.ini) and now the printer works again Although it set up a slightly different printer…Deskjet 680C series v11.0 instead of Deskjet 682C…but it works.

I tried to make a backup but was informed that it had already been created. Problem solved. I just wish I knew how I did it. Only problem now is that, when I reboot, the install shield for the printer drivers starts up when the desktop comes up. I can’t find anything in msconfig that seems to match…curious…

 

Aaaah, the joys of Windows :snipersm: