After uninstalling a shareware version of ‘Access Denied’ (password security program)computer would hault on splash screen when rebooting. Only thing I could access is BIOS or DOS prompt(with floppy boot). Not able to access safe mode. Decided it was a corrupted registry. Reinstalled Win95.
Upon reboot received message “While initializing device IOS: Windows protection error. You need to restart your computer.” Rebooted. Same. Tryed safe mode, box says “Error loading Explorer.exe. You must reinstall Windows.” Pressed ‘OK’ & another box “The explorer.exe file is linked to missing export SHLWAPI.DLL: SHRegGetUSValueA” System hang, ctrl + alt + del didn’t work. Hard booted. Auto scandisk due to Windows not shut down correctly.(No errors found.) Afterwards get the previous error “While initializing device IOS: Windows protection error. You need to restart your computer.” Rebooted. Same.
TechNet suggested ‘clean boot’. Renamed config.sys to config.xxx & autoexec.bat to autoexec.xxx. Reinstalled. While detecting PnP got same explorer errors as before. Hardboot. Safemode. Same. Reinstalled with Custom Setup. Chose only mouse, vga video adapter, & keyboard. Upon reboot & detecting PnP, explorer error again. Tryed for safe mode, same error. (Please note, not able to click on anything as desktop doesn’t finish, gives me no icons or start button.) TPG article suggested removing attrib’s from system.dat file & deleting it. System.dat file does not exist on C drive. Tryed removing attribs from ALL files on C. Typed in DIR SYSTEM.DAT /S not there. Did find SYSTEM.1ST & SYSTEM.BAK. Should I try those?
Also, saw suggestion to rename smartdrv.exe. Didn’t work.
Did find there is a patch I need for our AMDK6/2 400 cpu. Did download it. Not sure how to install this from DOS prompt to see if it will work.
Sick of it! Please help! Running out of patience…