Win 98 won't boot

[SARGE]

Son called from N. Carolina. Says he deleted a bunch of stuff and now it boots only to a C prompt and says something about himen.sys missing. I installed a "copy" of the OS to the C or D drive a year ago. His floppy doesn't work and I have the Win98 CD here. Is there a DOS command he could type in to restore the file(s) or at least try to? I know I've seen it here. Sys c: may not work since he doesn't have access to floppy (startup disk).

[GaryRouth]

An over-the-top might be his easiest fix - should take about 45 minutes, tops. He'll want to point to C:/Windows/Options/Cabs if that's where you put the cab files. If you put them somewhere else, he can search for them from DOS with the dir command. If you gave the folder an obscure name, and he's in good standing with you, might as well share that with him

Win9x over-the-top: http://forum.pcmech.com/showthread.p...threadid=70846

Best of luck to Sarge jr.
. . . Gary

[p.s. --he can borrow any Win98 bootdisk to start things from, but he does need to know his product key. I suppose a friend could also download one for him from bootdisk.com]

[hmm - just re-read your post again - I think I misunderstood = do you mean he can't use his floppy drive? or just that his floppy bootdisk isn't working? - or that he's not sure whether it's the drive or the diskette? --- I doubt there's anything wrong with the drive, have him try resetting the Bios to Defaullts and try the floppy drive again}

[SARGE]

He doesn't have the floppy ribbon. I'd forgotten that before I shipped the PC to him. I was isolating some problems on another PC and "borrowed" his. He'll get one. He called this morn and asked for the product key as I still have the cd here. Says a bud will help him onsite.

[HAL9000]

He can do a repair installation.... just switch to the location of the setup files and run the following command;

SETUP /P F

Be sure to put the spaces in for it to work correctly... this method shouldn't require the product code.

[GaryRouth]

Good idea, Hal - I keep forgetting about that command switch - partly because I haven't tried it yet [. . . and that's partly because I never remember in time = does this sound like an endless loop? ]
. . . Gary