Win 98 not booting

[eagle777]

My brother-in Law can't gwt his Win 98 machine running. It tries to boot then gets 4 messeges stating certain files might be missing or corrupted.
1. C:\WINDOWS\HIMEM.SYS 2. C:\WINDOWS\DBLBUFF.SYS
3. C:\WINDOWS\IFSHLP.SYS
4. CANNOT FIND WIN.COM
His system was running just a few days ago now it's down.
It's an ASUS P3B-F SLOT 1 WITH 600 MHZ CPU, 128MB RAM,20 gig maxtor HDD, unknown dvd rom, unknown cdrom and a floppy drive.
I tried to do a 98se reinstall but my disk says that I can't use it because it already has an OS loaded. Please help in any way you can thanks.

eagle777

[GaryRouth]

Hi eagle777

You might want to run diagnostics on the hard drive and memory just to make sure the hardware basics are OK. [hard drive diagnostics from the manufacturer's website, MemTest86 for the memory http://www.memtest.org ]

If you don't suspect the hardware, and want to try for a quick fix = an over-the-top might do it http://forum.pcmech.com/showthread.php?t=70846

Be careful with the details in the procedure. When done carefully, it generally works well.

Best of luck
. . . Gary

[Kiwi]

Originally Posted by eagle777 My brother-in Law can't gwt his Win 98 machine running. It tries to boot then gets 4 messeges stating certain files might be missing or corrupted. 1. C:\WINDOWS\HIMEM.SYS 2. C:\WINDOWS\DBLBUFF.SYS 3. C:\WINDOWS\IFSHLP.SYS 4. CANNOT FIND WIN.COM His system was running just a few days ago now it's down. It's an ASUS P3B-F SLOT 1 WITH 600 MHZ CPU, 128MB RAM

That's rather of an antique, and really could do with another 128 MB's of memory! Be that as it may, has he tried using Safe Mode yet? Has he tried using Scanreg or SFC? Can he get to DOS, even? Some diagnostic procedures can run from there.

[glc]

128mb ram is plenty adequate for Win98SE. Minimum requirements are 24mb.

Definitely test the ram and the hard drive first.