Help! Win98 will not startup.

[Reign of Chaos]

Here is my problem. When I turn on my computer it starts up normal, but when windows starts it goes to the windows 98 startup menu. With 4 choices, normal mode, safe mode, etc with a warning saying windows did not fully load last time... load in safe mode... The strange thing is that safe mode is highlighted and I can't choose any other if the 4. After 30 seconds it will go into scandisk and after that is finish with no problems I get the 98 screen and then it does'nt do anything else.

Could someone please help me out. I'am starting to get worried here. Thanks.

[mike breck]

Hi Reign of Chaos,

If you press ENTER when Safe Mode is highlighted, can you actually boot into Safe Mode?

If you can, then my logical sequence to identify the problem would be:

1. Check if the culprit is loading in Autoexec.bat, config.sys, Win.ini, or system.ini

2. Check if the problem is with a program launching from the Start-up folder.

3. Check for Resource conflicts.

1. In Safe Mode type "MSCONFIG" in the Start Menu "Run" box. In the System Configuration Utility click "Diagnostic Startup". Reboot and hold down the Ctrl key. At the DOS menu select "Step By Step Conformation". When prompted to process Autoexec.bat and Config.sys press "Esc" to bypass them. Press Enter to load everything else.
If Windows starts, then a entry in one of these files is causing the problem.
To rectify it, check the detailed instructions in "Windows Startup Troubleshooter".

2. If Windows still won't start, then move all the shortcuts from the Windows Startup folder into another folder. You can then identify the culprit by moving them back one at a time.

3. In Device Manager, go to the General tab of each device and disable these devices them by clicking "Disable in this Hardware Profile"

Display adapter, floppy disk controller, hard disk controller, mouse, network adapter, ports (com & lpt) SCSI controllers, sound video and game controllers.

See if you can boot into Windows. If you can, then go into Safe Mode and enable one device at a time and reboot. Keep on doing this until you have identified the hardware which is causing the problem.

If The PC won't boot into Windows after all this then you may have a corrupt registry and should try SCANREG/RESTORE from DOS.

If it is unable to boot into Safe Mode, then come back and let us know and we can try a different approach.

HTH

[Reign of Chaos]

Hi mike breck.

First I should say that I got it fixed. It turned out to be a fairly simply problem.

As I started reading the first sentence in your reply above about hitting enter to go into safemode it just hit me. I could not hit enter or move through the choices with the arrow keys at all. So I restarted the computer and try to get into bios by hitting the delete key. No luck again the computer just kept booting up. So then I though there must be something wrong with the keyboard. So I got another keyboard started the PC up and it started to go into windows with no problem. Then I got a message in windows saying there was no mouse attached. So I got a another working mouse and everything seems to be working great now.

It looks like the mouse and some of the keys on the keyboard must have went at the same time. Funny I never got a warning before about this.

Anyways thanks for the help. I have a lot of files I need stored on that computer. Also I'am going to copy and paste your above post. It seems like a good trouble shooter. Thanks again.