Windows 981E Startup problem - While initializing device IOS:

[Web Gecko]

Howdy

System is a Celeron 333 with 64MB SDRAM, Win 981E, 2.5GB and 850MB
HDDs etc.

Full message is :

While initialising device IOS:
Error: An I/O subsystem driver failed to load.
Either a file in the .\iosubsys subdirectory is corrupt,
or the system is low on memory.

end of error message

Info on Mses support site indicates that a virus could cause this kind of
problem by hooking interrupt 21H or 13H before windows can finish loading
it's VXD drivers ( just a possibility for now ).

I have tried the step by step startup from the windows startup menu
( safe mode fails the same way ) which indicates that msmouse.vxd is
failing to load. I say Y to creation of a bootlog.txt file but this is NOT
created ???? Anyone know how I can make this happen ?

Memory seems OK as full POST memory checkout produces no error messages and I can boot cleanly into MSDOS using either a start floppy or CD.

Other possibility is that I have a corrupt vxd file or related file in
the \iosubsys directory. MSes site indicates that this subdir is
c:\windows\system\iosubsys but I can't find this subdir ???
Is this a hidden folder or somesuch ? How can I get at it ?
Could I replace any of the files in this subdir with fresh ones from
the CAB file on the win install CD ?

Also if I can't run windows or safe mode then how can I scan the HDD for
virus code ? Is there something I can set up to run from floppy or CD ?

Any help\ideas welcome.

cheers

Web Gecko

[glc]

Yes, that's a hidden directory.

You can run F-Prot for DOS. Download it from www.f-prot.com, it's a zip file. Unzip it into a folder. Download the 2 definition updates and unzip them over the top of the program. Burn the folder to a CD, boot with a bootdisk with CD support, and run f-prot.exe.

The dos command to show hidden files and folders is DIR /A by the way. Just for grins, see if you can get into the \iosubsys subdirectory and rename SCSI1HLP.SYS to SCSI1HLP.OLD - see if that helps.

[Web Gecko]

Thanx for the info GLC

Don't know what my brain cells were doing when I suggested that POST
could have anything to do with verifying a low memory condition
I certainly didn't rule that out either by clean booting into MSDOS
as DOS uses less memory than loading drivers etc in the Windows startup
biz ( after DOS has been booted\loaded off the HDD anyway ).

My guess is that by renaming that file you suggested, it won't load and will free some memory for other stuff ??? ( other stuff on google refers to
SCSI1HLP.VXD instead of .SYS ??? ). When I can locate\get into iosubsys
I can try your suggestion.

Also my knowledge of MSDOS ain't that great. First I assumed that your
DIR /A would list any hidden directories in c:\windows\system but
iosubsys doesn't show up ( can't CD to it ). Then I thought that maybe
doing an attrib -h *.* might do it but again no show. There is something
I'm missing here with the file structure or how to deal with hidden directories
( can u help ?) . There are heaps of google hits which talk about this sub directory but I cain't find it. Does attrib only deal with file entries or is there special syntax to refer to directory entries ?

One interesting thing I found ( though maybe irrelevant and unhelpfull )
is that IOS.VXD resides in subdir VMM32 ( windows\system ).
IOS must (???) be like a virtual device ( loader ) which loads other
VXD drivers ??? Out of my depth here ( guessing ).

I did download fprot etc and will burn a CDR tomorrow so I can av scan the
HDDs ( thanx again - fprot will come in handy in the future too ).

Now to find this blasted iosubsys directory. load of msmouse.vxd comes from
windows\system and that fails. Maybe iosubsys hasn't been created yet
( temp subdir ???). Totally bamboozled on this one right now.

Where am I going wrong GLC ?

thanks

Web Gecko
( feeling a little silly after a major outage of grey networkage )

[glc]

Oops - I meant .VXD, sorry.

I'm closing this as you have started a new thread.