win 98se boot problem

[mememe]

i was making a back up of a dvd and i lost power. now i can only run in safe mode. my hds seem to be working. does any one know the solution to my problem?

[rjfvillarosa]

Can you give us the full specifications of your computer?

[mememe]

p4 1.6ghz, 512mb ram, 64mb nvidia gforce mmx 400, 40gb and 120gb hd, dvd +- r burner

[mememe]

do you think it could be my motherboard?

[rjfvillarosa]

Do you know how to reset the BIOS?

[mememe]

no. could that be the problem

[rjfvillarosa]

It is possible that one or two of your system files were corrupted by the power out or some of your hardware settings in the BIOS were corrupted, which ever it was we need to establish some basic knowledge of your machine.
Do you have the confidence to take the side off your machine and remove the mother board battery?

[mememe]

dont know about taking the battery out. unless i write the info in my cmos first

[rjfvillarosa]

Ok your CMOS chip contains two sets of hardware information, one is the most basic of information that will start any machine up before windows is loaded, the other one is the latest hardware information that windows wrote to the CMOS chip the last time your machine shut down correctly. The possibilty of the windows information being corrupt is quite high as your machine shut down during a power outage, by removing the motherboard battery for half an hour or more you will reset your CMOS chip to the original basic BIOS information. Hopefully this will allow you to start up your machine and get into windows normal, all that you will notice is that your clock and date settings are wrong and you will need to reset them in control panel.
If you feel confident enough to remove the battery let me know and I can talk you through it, but before you remove the battery you must remove the main power cable from the wall socket.

[mememe]

oh ic. but i dont need to re-enter any settings after i remove the battery?

[rjfvillarosa]

No the settings will be default set to the basic settings all you will have to do (provided it clears the fault and allows you to boot windows normal) is reset the time and date, windows will take care of the rest for you.

[glc]

You may not have to remove the battery - many boards have a clear cmos jumper.

Boot it to a command prompt and run SCANREG /RESTORE - restore a registry from before the power failure. If system files got corrupted, you may have to do an "over the top" reinstall of Windows.

[mememe]

i was told not to reset my bios

[rjfvillarosa]

That is good advice because unless you have a very good reason to do so you should leave it alone, that said you now have that good reason and resetting the BIOS maybe the only way to get windows to start up normaly

[mememe]

what about re-installing windows in safe mode or dos. my bootlog.txt says that i have alot of fonts that are not loading correctly

[rjfvillarosa]

Are you talking about formating the hard drive and reinstalling windows? because this will delete everything you have on your hard drive including all of your documents.

[mememe]

no not at all. re-install windows over the current version like a repair. and i am currently moving all my important data over to my bigger hd

[rjfvillarosa]

You can try an "over the top" installation. Just boot with your 98SE CD and choose Setup Windows 98. Just make sure when it comes up and asks you what directory to install to, it doesn't say c:\windows.000 - change that to c:\windows.

[mememe]

i already have the cabs on my pc. can i use those to install?

[mememe]

hey i re-installed windows and it seems to be working now. but i cant find my second hard drive

[mememe]

is there a way to get my data back from my 120gb hd. i needed to format it

[rjfvillarosa]

Originally Posted by mememe hey i re-installed windows and it seems to be working now. but i cant find my second hard drive

Can you see this drive recognised in the BIOS screen on boot up?

Originally Posted by mememe is there a way to get my data back from my 120gb hd. i needed to format it

When you format a drive usualy all of the files are still there, the only problem is thay have been broken up into 16kb pieces. There are file recovery programs but they are rather expensive, and I don't know of a free one, also there are companies that specialise in data recovery but these are very expensive.