System Files GONE????

[BaldEagle]

Maybe someone can help me out here....

I just partitioned and formatted a new hard drive, so far so good.
While installing Win98 from the CD, I notice that the computer is not restarting as it is supposed to during setup.
I boot to safe mode, choose restart, no problem.
Now everytime I try to choose "restart"...it turns off...kinda.
Windows shuts down, but no warm boot!
To top it off, msconfig shows NOTHING in my autoexec.bat and config.sys files...THEY ARE EMPTY!

How did I do this and how do I fix it?
Please throw me a line someone.

[Cricket]

Hi BaldEagle,

Not sure what's going on with your restart problem, but autoexec.bat and config.sys are usually empty when you first install Win98. You'd only get entries in it if you install software or hardware that need support in DOS. It's not a problem you have to worry about.

Did you let the Win98 installation finish? You might have interrupted it if you didn't wait until you got the Win98 Welcome Screen message.

Try seeing if the information at this website helps: Windows Support Center (http://www.aumha.org/)

And visit the Microsoft Knowledge Base, there might be an answer there.

:) Cricket

[BaldEagle]

Thanks Cricket!

At least I know that the system files are ok.
So why will it Reboot from safe mode and not from regular mode?
Does anyone know enough about safe mode to instruct me on a fix?

[racerbrownn]

safe mode simply loads a very minimum of drivers [not even the cdrom will work] so as to minimize the risk of conflicts. the fact that reboot works in safe and not in normal, you probably have a driver or software issue etc. a quick check of programs running is to three button salute the pc ctrl-alt-del and look in the box for software thats running. highlighting and chosing cancel will turn off these items one at a time so you can try the reboot between each program you cancel to see if things start working minus said canceled prog. don't be surprised if 20 sec after you cancel something, the cancel box pops back up about the prog being busy, just cancel it again and it will be history for that boot cycle. do wait 20 sec before reboot to make sure the prog. in question is fully off! DO NOT cancel either explorer or sys tray as these two are necessary to run windows. otherwise, have at it and see what you find.