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I am seeing an error message

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When I boot up my computer (in POST screen), it says "can not find win.com, unable to continue loading windows".

8 replies

by sgt_shultz

try tapping (don't hold down) the F8 key (topmost row of keys on keyboard) during boot. if you manage to get to a screen that says Boot Menu, pick Safe Mode, command prompt only. try running scandisk from there. pick Fix if errors are reported and Skip undo.
do you have a CD drive? do you have your installation CD? see if you can boot from that if you don't have a bootable floppy handy...

by ann777

What does your autoexec.bat look like?

You should have a path statement that includes:
c:\windows
... somewhere in that line.

by ann777

Sorry, more detail with my answer.

When win9x boots, it need to be able to find certain file in order to run Windows. Win.com is one of the files and if someone deleted autoexec.bat or the path statement within... then windows will give you that error message.

Edit autoexec.bat and add:
path=c:\;c:\windows;c:\windows\system32

save and exit and try again.

If it give you more files missing errors, then I'd recommend that you reinstall Windows on top of the current installationif you have to.

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