Windows ME won't start

[rockgodz]

I've been looking at this board for a while, trying to find the answer to my question, but to no avail, so am asking one of my own. I've been having startup probs for a little while and recently Windows ME has refused to boot, just hanging with a flashing cursor in the top left hand corner. I know I had conflicts before the startup problems, but attempts to resolve have only made matters worse.

So, I decided to investigate the 'ENUM' trick. I booted into Safe mode and ran Regedit and deleted the ENUM key. Then restarted and went Control Panel > Add New Hardware and told it to search. It duly returned everything I expected and clicking Finish took it the next stage. On rebooting, the first thing that came up as a new device was PCI Bus. This is as far as it gets and the system then locks up.

I have a GeForce 2 Ti AGP and that is all that is installed in my system as I've removed my SCSI card to do ENUM. The snag is that my two cd drives are SCSI, so haven't got access to the cd drives at all at this stage. The boot disk I made earlier no longer
recognises the SCSI bus either, so can't boot from floppy to access either.

Suspecting AGP video problems, I swapped to an ATI Rage card that I had lying around with exactly the same results. What has gone wrong here? My BIOS is set up to run failsafe, but i've disabled everything I can to help prevent conflicts but can't overcome the problem.

There was mention of installing the 4 in 1 drivers for my Gigabyte mobo (7VTXH+). When should I do this? Also, when I reboot the first time after 'ENUM' deletion, should I run with 'Selective Startup' in msconfig or should I just let the system run all my usual drivers?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Dave

[JUANY]

hi
i had the same problem starting me so what i did was reformat the h/d and installed win 98 and since then i have not had any problems so i thought hey i would instal me again and guess what i had the same problem as before so i have now win 98 and works like new

[Cricket]

Hi rockgodz,

You can boot into Safe Mode but not normal Windows? Sounds like virtual driver issues.

Do you remember what kind of conflicts you were trying to resolve? Were you getting error messages or was the system hanging?

Does your system POST okay with the one good POST beep?

What are your system specs (motherboard, CPU, etc...)?

Cricket

[rockgodz]

Hi Cricket, thanks for coming back to me with some suggestions. I too suspect it's virtual driver issues. The original conflicts were between the hard disk controller and the GeForce2 card. This snowballed as I tried to solve the problem. My motherboard is Gigabyte GA-7VTXH+ with the latest BIOS and XP1700+ CPU.

POST is fine, no extended beeps at all. I can manually add drivers for bits of my system in Safe Mode and the system will boot into protected mode Windows, but as soon as I try to autodetect Mobo stuff and it finds the PCI bus, it hangs then won't reboot into protected mode any more.

I've moved on a little, booting from my emergency startup disk and running Windows Setup (from CAB files on my second HD), an installation on top of the current one, not a clean install, but it fails to build the Monolithic file from VXDs. Is this the key error that points to virtual drivers?

How shall I proceed?

Dave

Originally posted by Cricket Hi rockgodz, You can boot into Safe Mode but not normal Windows? Sounds like virtual driver issues. Do you remember what kind of conflicts you were trying to resolve? Were you getting error messages or was the system hanging? Does your system POST okay with the one good POST beep? What are your system specs (motherboard, CPU, etc...)? Cricket

[GaryRouth]

If your personal data is backed up OK, seems like the easiest chance at this point would be to fdisk, delete the current partitions (IF there is not a proprietary Non-DOS partition from a major OEM maker like Compaq - if you see a Non-DOS partition, leave that one alone) and then create a Primary DOS partition, mark it active, & let WinME format it as part of Setup. After Setup finishes is when you install the Via 4-n-1. Their install program should only install the parts that WinMe requires. After the Via 4-n-1 drivers are loaded, you can then install the proper drivers for your video = either the nVidia or ATi should be OK.

Leave out any cards that you can install later (modems, sound cards, extra PCI IDE cards, network cards, etc.)...and unplug any USB peripherals (other than keyboard & mouse), scanners, printers, etc. . .

If you suspect hardware at all (though if all is well in Safe Mode that's less likely) - you can test the memory with DocMemory at http://www.simmtester.com and the hard drive with the diagnostic from it's maker's website (such as PowerMax for Maxtors, SeaTools for Seagates, DataLifeGuard for Western Digitals, etc) . . .

If you're still having trouble, keep posting with more questions and updates & we'll see what's up. I'm curious as to whether WinMe was the original OS, and if this is a store-bought or homebuilt PC.

Best of luck
. . . Gary

[and hello Cricket - maybe you guys will have it all fixed by the time I check the forum tomorrow - I'll be carting the kids around = it's the first day back to school after the holidays ]

[rockgodz]

Hi there Gary, thanks for the suggestions. I was pretty much expecting that this would be what was recommended.

The PC is home built and Windows ME was already installed when the Hard Drives were in another PC with another Motherboard. When I transferred them everything seemed to still work fine, so i didn't reformat or anything. This is undoubtedly the root of the problem I think, it seems to have been creeping up on me as resources have been allocated/reallocated and eventually it's bitten me.

I've got all of my programs backed up to my second HD, so no problem with fdisking as long as I can get the DOS SCSI Driver sorted for the CD-ROMS.

My OS in Windows ME but only the upgrade version (it's a bought and paid for version). I have a Win98SE disk, but it's a copy. Will I need it?

Dave

[GaryRouth]

Not sure if a copy would work: I've never tried it. (If that were an original disk, then you'd insert it when Setup asks for the earlier version). . .

Any techs out there know?

. . . Gary

[you will need some earlier version disk, I'm just not sure if a copy will work. I imagine it probably would work, the only case in which it wouldn't is if MS has a copy-protection scheme that the average burner can't duplicate - I haven't read much about such protective programs, so I'm not of much help there]

[rockgodz]

OK here's the latest. Last night I thought about it a bit more (like Treebeard did in LOTR) and decided to try something.

I booted from my Emergency Startup Disk and from the CAB files on my second HD installed Windows to that second HD. When set up had finished and was ready to reboot the first time, i nipped into my BIOS and told it to boot from the second HD instead of the first. The installation went brilliantly and I now have a working system with Windows ME booting from Drive D: All hardware is detected correctly and operation is a success. I haven't installed any programs yet, just devices and drivers.

My next operation is to remove the 1st drive from the PC (with associated cable changes) and allow the second drive to refind itself as C:. Some tweaks may be required but this should work I think, then just a matter of reinstalling the progs and backed-up data.

One thing to add, thank f**k for Partition Magic !

Cheers to all,

Dave

[GaryRouth]

Nice work Dave!