I messed up an old laptop and need help

[ROYP123]

Gateway 2000 Solo 9100 a PII at 233 mhz and 64 meg of ram. Uses Win98SE.
The lady could not add a game she wanted to add. The 2 gig c:\drive had 325 bytes unused. She had a D:\ drive that had 2 gigs unused. All the D:\ drive had on it was one game.
I could not delete the partitions and reload Win 98 because she did not have the disks for her games. So I used Partition Commander and shrunk the d:\ partition and added it to the c:\. That worked pretty well... now she has 5 gig. BUT. when I tried to boot the message was " unable to control the A20 line and the XMS driver was not installed. Himem.sys not found.( No boot.)
Okay, I tried to do an " over the top Win98 install ". The BIOS only has A: then C: , so can not boot from the Win 98 disk.
When I used the Win98 floppy, I got the same message as before, then finally, " The Windows 98 startup disk could not create a temporary drive for the diagnostic tools. This may be because this computer has less than the minimum required extended memory. "
Path not found :\command.com
path not found :\extract.exe
path not found :\readme.txt
bad command or file.
Then the A:\ (and the help file does not work.)
The computer uses restore disks which she does not have.
I know the laptop is old, and before I worked on it, I tried to replace it with a freebie desktop that runs at 733 with 256 memory, but she is frail and can handle the laptop on her kitchen table. I need to get it working.
Sounds like I lost the autoexec.bat and a few things. I can find the config.sys, but that is it.
I can get to the C:\ drive, but not in Safe Mode. That brings me to the C:\ after saying " Windows is bypassing your startup files."
What do I have to create in DOS to get Windows loaded? I forget how.
Thanks

[ROYP123]

Had to get the computer back to her, so will fdisk , format and use the Win 98 disk to enable cd rom support and reload Windows. So much for my knowing how to use Partition Magic. Regards

[yoloksky]

hello,

have you tried a:\sys c: ?, this would make hd start without startup disk.
have you run fdisk and check the hd?

or try run win.exe under C:\, type win then enter, this would go into windows then try to press f8 and enter safe mode

im scared of partitioning hd, i normally do partitioning only on fresh setup using fdisk, partition magic/and other partitioning software is trouble (for me)

wbr

[ROYP123]

Thanks.. I was trying to avoid fdisk, since I wanted to retain the data. Tried C:\win cou;ld not load windows. When I did F8 it could not go into Safe Mode. It kept tellling me that the high memory command was screwed up. I tried to write an autoexec.bat, change the config.sys, but Wind98 does not need those. Finally I did Fdisk, formatted and started Win98 with cd rom support and loaded Windows.
I too only partition when I am setting up a drive, but this was partitioned and the computer virtually became unusable. yet it had a 2nd partition with only one file on it. A card game.. not a restore partition. I thought I had to shrink the partition to make computer usable, and I did. But when I restarted that was when my problems got worse. Perhaps I closed out of Partition Magic the wrong way, etc.
This was a favor for a 85 year old lady that has had several cancer surgeries and needs SOME entertainment. So I ended up ordering the games I deleted and will reload tomorrow when they arrive.
I think I better read the manual for Partiton Magic before I use it again.
Thanks for the try.

[Negeva]

That's one of the reasons why I stopped using Partition Magic, as it never seemed to work correctly. For older OSes I use a free copy of Acronis that came with a PC magazine several years ago as it boots from the floppy. For newer machines I use Acronis Disk Manager and have never had any issues with it, even resizing or creating partitions with an OS and data on it has been safe and sucessful.

My advice dump Partition Magic and use Acronis.