Reinstalling on Compressed Disk after deleting NDIS

[Vieux Richard]

Could not get this PC to boot correctly – only to SAFE mode. Configured MSCONFIG to Selective Startup and by series of elimination, I found that the ndis.vxd was at fault. I then removed the key and now cannot get Windows to boot correctly.
Went to reinstall Windows 98SE & it tells me that as it is a compressed disk, Windows cannot reinstall.
So I would like to (i) reinstall the registry key for NDIS but am not sure how to do this nor (ii) how to get Windows reinstalled on this compressed hard disk. Why is a HD compressed?

[andyms18a]

boot with a win98 boot disk and at the a: type c: and hit enter then type cd windows and hit enter then type cd command and hit enter then type scanreg /restor and hit enter pick a restor point befor you removed ndis.dll after its finished shut down the computer and remove your network card or if its built on to the motherboard see if you can disable it in the bios after that see if you can boot to windows

[Vieux Richard]

Thanks for the reply. I will certainly run a scanreg /restor to get back to the previous registry and remove the n/w card.
If this does not resolve the problem, I think I am right in saying that if the HD is compressed, then there is no way to get Windows to boot correctly other than to format the HD & reinstall everything. Is there any other easier solution?

[andyms18a]

i havent used compresd drives but the folowing links may help
http://support.microsoft.com/default...51&Product=w98
http://support.microsoft.com/default...48&Product=w98
http://support.microsoft.com/default...18&Product=w98

[Vieux Richard]

It seems that the drive is not compressed. When rebooting from a boot disk and then trying to install the Windows CD from the D: prompt, there is an error message that says (in French) something about "Windows needs a maximum executable of at least 442368 bytes to work".
There's plenty of space on the HD, so I looked on the Web for this error and all I could find was a posting suggesting that a new boot disk would fix this. Someone had even formatted their HD & still got this error. So I created a new boot diskette but still had the same result.
In the end, I settled for not doing a clean reinstall of Windows & just reinstalled from the CD when in Windows, which got Windows booting OK but not a long term solution. Any ideas?

[andyms18a]

you can get the same error masage if you use a windows me boot disk on a windows 98 computer