O, I’m back w/ a stickier problem than the one earlier this week. First one w/ a solution that actually gets me into Windows normally or even into working in Safe Mode for that matter, and doesn’t actually contain the words or the meaning of “Reformat” or “re-install Windows” gets the 1000 points. Will award some to those that also contain answers that work somewhat but do not cover that which I have already tried.
A Dell OptiPlex GX-1 Tower 450MHZ P-III on a Planar MB, 128MB, 8.4 GB HDD (32% of drive in use)running Win98SE- Belongs to a school (10 yr. teachers’ classroom puter, data invaluable, no backup of course!). Registry & system recently cleaned 3 mos. ago, runs maint nightly (clean, scan & frag).
A young student attempted (without permission of course) to install a program from CD; MR. POTATO HEAD after installation of 2 LEGO game programs from CD’s (he of course didn’t shut down anything running or restart between installs. Uggggh!!!)
By the time I’m called the box won’t boot into Windows completely. Boot seems fine until it gets to the desktop opening (except on the Win Flash logo screen the blue bar has little to no movement, drive is working hard tho). The network logon window opens, as soon as an attempt is made to go past the logon to network, either way (click cancel without a PW and the IPF is instant), (click OK, and a Windows Logon window opens), password is not accepted to Logon to Windows (unknown if he also entered a PW to log onto windows, as it was formerly blank), click cancel and the same illegal oper. warning showing the same IPF window comes up. (cont.)