Windows 98 ONLY booting in safe mode

[soarin]

My friend's PC will currently ONLY boot in safe mode. I have walked him through checking to see if there is anything fishy in the msconfig --> startup lists etc....checked for viruses and the MS support site...so far nothing has worked. Anyone else know of some other causes for this happening? No mattwe what we try... the system will not boot normally...always in safe mode! UGH! Any ideas?

[ktkendall]

Sounds like same missing or corrupted files or drivers. Did you check device manager?? I think you can boot from the win98 disk and run the setup program to repair any win98 missing or corrupted files!

[soarin]

Okay will try that...anyone with any other ideas?

[Cricket]

Hi soarin,

What did your friend do to his computer right before this started?

Were you able to run a virus scan on the system?

One reason Windows will boot into Safe Mode is if it finds a problem with one of the devices. Strip the system down to the motherboard, CPU, heatsink, video card, 1 stick of RAM, PC speaker and power supply and try for POST. Then, add just the hard drive and see if Windows will boot normally. If it does, there is something wrong with one of the other components or devices. Add 1 device at a time until the problem returns...that's the device that needs replacing.

If Windows doesn't load normally, try another video card or another stick of RAM to find the problem. You might even want to test the hard drive with the manufacturer's diagnostic utilities to see if there is anything wrong with it.

:) Cricket

[kittyfire]

If you can load into safe mode but not normal mode, you're more than likely looking at a driver issue. Safe mode only loads a minimal set of drivers. If you're worried something in startup may be causing an issue, just go into msconfig and tell it to bypass all startup items. I wouldn't leave it like that as I'd never recommend running without scanreg on a permanent basis, but for troubleshooting, yeah. Did they install anything that may have written to the autoexec or config.sys? I'd check and make sure those are empty or everything REMed out. Anything that looks suspicious in device manager, remove. If it's legit, it'll put itself back. That's where I'd start. ::shrugs:: Nine times out of ten it's going to be a driver issue. Did he say what he installed/tried to install before this started?

[GaryRouth]

Any luck yet? Cricket & kittyfire gave you some good tips.

Another few things if nothing shows up (although it's likely you'll find it with those approaches) is to run Registry Checker and System File Checker from Start/Programs/Accessories/System Tools/System Information . . . start System Information, and select "Registry Checker" (and after that, System File Checker) from the "Tools" menu.

Best of luck
. . . Gary

[p.s. ...Sarge has just posted an excellent link from the Microsoft Knowledge Base: it has a very thorough step-by-step process that looks custom made for the exact problem you're having. Think I'll bookmark that one! ...nice link, Sarge]

[SARGE]

Walk through this:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q188867#3

[colombo3]

Hi all. Have been having the exact same problem with a friend's computer. I tried all of the above suggestions (and Microsoft's)and the machine still won't start normally (although it did 3 or 4 times when I first got it to my place, which was very weird). Whenever attempting to boot into regular windows we get a fatal exception error. Trying to run a virus checker, but short of that what else is left that it could be?

[GaryRouth]

Hi colombo - See if you can copy down that fatal exception error and post it here for us to take a look at. As you can see from the length of the MS Troubleshooting list, many things cause this kind of trouble. The trick is to go slowly, one step at a time. . . By the way, if this is a major brand: post the make/model - that might help too.

soarin - Since we haven't heard from you in about a week, I'm figuring you've fixed your box all up. Maybe you could give a troubleshooting tip to colombo, too - perhaps it's a simiiliar problem.

I'll check back toward noontime (PST) when I'm on break at work
. . . Gary

[colombo3]

Fatal exception 0D has occured at 201F:00000316

He has a generic system. PII mmx 350MHz processor, WD hard drive (10GB), CD, floppy, and Iomega zip drive, 235 W power supply. Not sure brand of mobo. It has 3 ISA slots, 4 PCi, and an AGP. Tried swapping out video card (his wouldn't work well with my spare monitor) and swapped his 64 mb ram for a 128. No conflicts listed and device manager checks out okay. I just thought it was really weird that the first 4 times I started the machine after we moved it here that it booted okay. And yup, I reseated everything.

Tried reinstalling windows (98) so that it would just repair any missing files, but on first reboot got the same error message. Ran WD's diagnostics, and that checked out okay. Tried to run Norton AV from disk yesterday while it was still at his place, but it ran for hours and didn't show anything. Just made up-to-date floppies from my system, so guess I'll let that run and go get a couple of hours sleep :)

Have the feeling that it's a virus. He wasn't running ANY antivirus at all (or firewall for that matter), and from his temporary internet files folder you could see someone was checking out an awful lot of porn sites.

;)

[mike breck]

I couldn't find anything specific to your FE error. The trouble is, your error doesn't give any clues to what's causing it.

However, general FE errorsa can be caused by Hardware conflicts and bad or incompatible Ram.

Try disconnecting the floppy, Zip drive, CD-Rom, and all PCI cards. Does the error persist with a barebones setup?

Try another stick of Ram.

Format the HD and reinstall Windows.

BTW that 235 Watt PSU seems a bit on the light side for all the devices. I would suggest getting a 300 Watt PSU.

HTH

[colombo3]

Mike,
I tried all of your suggestions, and yes it won't even boot barebones, new RAM, or new video card. Windows states there are no hardware confilcts, and no shares. NAV finished running from up-to-date disks and found nothing. Will trying going over the basic diagnostics again to see if I missed something.

I don't want to start a total reinstall because he hasn't found all of his system disks.

And found info on mbo. A diagnostics demo program I ran says it's i440BX-W977TF-2A69KTPAC-00 (So it's an Intel board??). Oh and of course the program could find nothing wrong :)

[mike breck]

Can you actually start the PC in Safe Mode?

Try scanning for Trojans with The Cleaner

http://www.moosoft.com/

[colombo3]

Okay, maybe getting somewhere. Went back through MS's suggestions for boot options. Could get it to boot with everything but sys.ini loading. (That didn't work before, but does now)

Went through sys.ini list and the problem seems to be in the Boot section. Specifically, if I uncheck "system.drv=atmsys.drv" the system will boot into windows. I don't have mouse, and device manager shows an exclamation point on "processor support" in "System devices". (But only in regular boot, not safe mode)

Any ideas on how to fix this?


Thanks for everyones help!

[mike breck]

Change the line that reads SYSTEM.DRV=ATMSYS.DRV to read the standard SYSTEM.DRV=SYSTEM.DRV and then tick it again.

In the section called Boot Description, look for the line mouse.drv=.
Make sure it says mouse.drv=Standard mouse. If not, then edit the line and save the changes.

HTH

[GaryRouth]

This is getting interesting.

While you're in sys.ini, look to make sure you have a line in the [boot] section that reads drivers=mmsystem.dll --> when that line is missing, it can cause booting to Safe Mode.

You can also look in Windows Explorer, in C:\Windows, to see if there are other copies of sys.bak, sys.old, or sys.xxx (where the xxx looks like some extension whose program changed the sys.ini settings and saved the older file with a different extension. Compare the versions and see what changes were made.

I just cleaned and repaired a WinME system that was so virus ridden (they had used Kazaa & a zillion strange downloads) - and it's sys.ini was just all messed up: one of the strangest I've seen. Even System Restore was wiped out on that system. . .

Sounds like you're on the right track
. . . Gary

[colombo3]

Houston we have a go :)

The only older sys.ini file I could find that wasn't from me the last 2 days, was one way back from April of 2000. The interesting thing though is that it also had the "system.drv=atmsys.drv" line in it,and wouldn't boot that way. When I changed that it works fine. Also the original sys.ini file that wouldn't boot had no [drivers32] section in it!!

Now off to install AV and Firewall and do a few different virus tests and all windows updates. I guess we'll see if any other problems pop up.

Thanks alot...can't tell you how much I appreciate the help!
-Eve

[colombo3]

Still two slightly weird things. In device manager Processor Support is still highlighted in the system devices section. The other is that I can't install Norton Internet Security. It completely shut down system during install. I tried copying the files to hard disk, then install, and got a little further. It worked until it got to the section where it searches for Internet Enabled programs. Then the computer just reboots.

Now, I scanned for virii with rescue disks, and once system was up also used Housecall online virus scanner, and neither turned up anything. Also ran Cleaner as suggested above and came up with nothing. Ran Ad-Aware which came up with it's usual 87 or so spyware files and removed those. Anything else I should be checking here?

[kittyfire]

This is really old, but have you run chkdsk from dos to check the total bytes memory. It's an oldie but goodie. If it's lower than 655,360 then there may be an issue with the bootsector. Like a virus.

Also, did you check the registry for any bad keys under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\
Windows\CurrentVersion\Run or RunOnce?

Did he have scan reg enabled in startup? If so, is there a restore point from before when this happened? In 98 you can restore by going to a dos prompt (at boot up, not shut down) and typing /scanreg restore (there's a space between scanreg and restore). It opens a dos utility to choose a restore point. Just curious if you did that if the processor support issue would clear itself up.

Also... again, just curious... was his hard drive compressed?

[colombo3]

Kittyfire,
Yup, ran chkdisk, and if memory serves that looked okay. The first thing I tried on the computer was scanreg/ restore. The problem must've been older than the 5 days or so it would roll back to. Of course the 3 people who use the thing all deny having downloaded anything, or opening emails, or even adding new programs or hardware. But one of 'em sure was on the porno sites. IE's home page was set to one ;). Ran registry checker which also showed no problems. I don't know enough about the registry to be able to pick out a bad key by myself.

I returned the computer, however "repaired" it was. He was thinking about getting a new machine anyway, so I suggested he do it pronto. I also had a problem with his mouse causing a fatal error when I hooked it up for him (He only brought me the tower itself). Had to use his mouse with an adapter on the old serial (?) connector. Also couldn't get his printer to work, because of course that's connected to a PCI slot card instead of the standard serial connector. I really have to wonder now if his problems are all mobo related. Of course the place that built it for him closed up shop in the middle of the night. Now I know why!

[glc]

Commate P2BXA.........sure sounds like a PC Chips clone to me. Your replacement recommendation may well be the best way.