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  • October 9, 2003 at 10:25 pm #2279336

    Win98 won’t boot from startup disk

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    by jewelfordscott · about 19 years, 8 months ago

    I swapped hard drives (master to slave and vice versa) on a Win98 machine. Though the computer recognized the swap, suddenly the files in Windows 98 (Himem.sys, and a few others got corrupted. The machine will not boot up from the emergency disk at all, will not allow me to run setup to correct the problem. What should I do? I don’t have a problem with reformatting the drive if that is what I have to do.

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    • October 9, 2003 at 10:55 pm #3365179

      Reply To: Win98 won’t boot from startup disk

      by tech_wiz03 · about 19 years, 8 months ago

      In reply to Win98 won’t boot from startup disk

      Your windows98 emergency disk if undamaged should always be able to boot the system. The boot disk is basically just a dos structure with generic cdrom support.

      1) Check your Bios and make sure you have boot from floppy active as first option, then cdrom support second and finally your harddisk.

      2) If this gets you to operational state your away, if not try and find a friend that has a windows98 emergency disk. Last option is to obtain a boot disk for http://www.bootdisk.com .

      **If all this fails, you may just have to restore your system through a complete format and re-install.

      regards
      rick

    • October 9, 2003 at 11:42 pm #3365174

      Reply To: Win98 won’t boot from startup disk

      by jewelfordscott · about 19 years, 8 months ago

      In reply to Win98 won’t boot from startup disk

      Thanks Rick, I forgot to mention that I can no longer get to the C:>. What now?

    • October 10, 2003 at 9:25 am #3365015

      Reply To: Win98 won’t boot from startup disk

      by sue t · about 19 years, 8 months ago

      In reply to Win98 won’t boot from startup disk

      A couple of things to try before you reformat. Have you tried swapping the drives back to the way they used to be? Double check that the pins are jumpered right on the drives and that they are connected in the right order on the ribbon cable. Did you run Fdisk to see if both drives show up and if it is marked as active and primary?

    • October 10, 2003 at 4:38 pm #3542381

      Reply To: Win98 won’t boot from startup disk

      by thechas · about 19 years, 8 months ago

      In reply to Win98 won’t boot from startup disk

      Was either drive set up with the floppy disk utility provided by the drive manufacture?

      If so, you cannot simply swap the drives around as the utility needs to be on the boot sector of the master drive on IDE 0.

      I wonder if your emergency disk is an actual boot disk.

      What you need is a W98 startup disk.
      You can create 1 on ANY running W98 PC from the add/remove programs menu.

      Or, you can download a boot disk from http://www.bootdisk.com
      or http://www.madboot.com

      Chas

    • October 10, 2003 at 11:05 pm #3542336

      Reply To: Win98 won’t boot from startup disk

      by jewelfordscott · about 19 years, 8 months ago

      In reply to Win98 won’t boot from startup disk

      This question was closed by the author

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