Missing driver with ME

[Panama Red]

Servicing a friend's system and have a problem. Was working fine. Added NIC and connected to my router, downloaded windows update, adaware, spybot, & avg. Since it's a Gateway Essential 933, I removed all the unneeded Gateway software and unchecked the unnecessary startup programs. Ran Registy Healer and Disk Cleanup. Ran Spybot and Adaware, but did not run AVG after install. Tried to run Defrag, but it said "cannot run, need to run scandisk". I said ok and Scandisk started. Then I got a blue screen with the following: " 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. System halted." Reboots get me to same blue screen. Can't get into Safe Mode. Step by step boot tells me driver missing is "C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\msmouse.vxd. Booted from restore disk and, after struggling with DOS, was able to run full Scandisk. Errors were fixed in several areas, but still can't boot Normal or Safe.
When booting from restore CD and "Select NT 4.0 DRIVER LOCATOR", I get the following: "\WIN95-98\MOUSE\MOUSE.EXE" . I am then given options to Exit, Print, Save, or Scroll. Exit takes me to DOS. I don't know DOS commands, so I'm stuck. What to do?

[Panama Red]

Ok, no responses yet. It's lunch time and I'm back at it. Right now I'm running an Emergency Virus Repair by booting the Gateway Essential from a Norton AV 2003 CD. Nothing reported yet. Also, I've located the missing driver on the Gateway recovery CD and copied it to a floppy. Now how do I reinstall this driver given my boot problem?

[GaryRouth]

To copy just that file from your floppy into the Windows System directory in DOS:

A:> copy a:\msmouse.exe C:\Windows\System

If you keep having file issues for a while & get tired of copying things over, you could do an over-the-top reinstall - IF your friend has either a Windows install disk (not just a Recovery), or has the cabs in the C:\Windows\Options\Cabs file. You can check if they are there even if you can only boot to DOS. In DOS, type cd\Windows\Options\Cabs - if it can't find the directory, the files aren't there. If it looks OK: here are the details: http://forum.pcmech.com/showthread.p...threadid=70846

The interesting thing is the mention of NT 4.0 in the Recovery Disk set. Did his Gateway originally come with NT or Win2000?
Curious
. . . Gary