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Windows 98 will not load

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6 replies

by bexar

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My user attempted to load IE on their Sony notebook, and in the process ran out of hard drive space. Now the notebook will not boot, even in safe mode. Using the startup diskette to boot I have gained sufficient free space but still get the "fatalexception 0E at
such and such address" when attempting to load windows 98 SE. Something odd - when attempting file operations (DIR, COPY, etc) in C:\windows, the operations take a VERY long time to complete and the HDD LED is on the entire time. All other directories operate at "normal" speed. Would this affect loading windows (HDD timeout?) I have found no virses and scandisk reports are good.
Am concidering the System Recovery CD path but hate to pass up what might be a simple solution.
Thanks in advance for your suggestions.

Perry

6 replies

by preymantis69

You said you ran out of HDD space? Do you have any unnessesary files that you can delete because windows needs (for saftey reasons) 10% of your hdd free at ALL times, this is for swap file purposes etc. If you can get access to you c:\ again, deletethe files you think that you will not need. If you have a 1.6gHDD then 10% of that should be left free, ie: 160MB. Plus I would definitly run chkdsk/f at the command prompt after you have deleted the files, then you should run scandisk because filesmay have been corrupted because of lack of HDD space. Hope this helps? I will bookmark this, to see you had any further trouble?

by bexar

I hope I'm responding correctly since I'm rather new at this. Want to thank you for responding. I formatted the HDD, reinstalled Win 98 and apps. All is working just fine now.
Thanks again,

Bexar

by guruofdos

This is a classic. You have run into the classic 'too many files in a directory' issue. Is the drive running FAT16?!!

by preymantis69

Fat16 would limit the number of files of the rootto 65,535 files, not in the individual directories? I may be mistaken about this but I thought the person may of had win98se on it? And that has fat32 converter which also increases the number of files in the file allocation table that are allowed of the root? Another problem is when you save files do you let the program choose the name because sometimes it wants to save it as very long sentence this can impact the space available in your fat. But for the most part I think you just ran out of hdd space and may of caused this problem?

by bexar

You are correct. Flat out of hard drive space.
I formatted the drive, installed the O/S and applications -- all is working just fine. Thanks for your help.

Regards,

bexar

by bexar

Sincerely appreciate your response. Am running FAT32 but just flat ran out of hard drive space. I formatted, loaded O/S and apps and all is working now.

Thanks again

Bexar

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