blair

'Cos I don't have a scooby about what has happened.

My trusty old PC was working fine when I last checked email on Friday night (I didn't touch any of the system settings) but when the other half turned the PC on yesterday, it ran through the autoexec stuff ok but then froze just after the windows loading screen appeared.

After a short while the windows loading screen was replaced by a black screen with a flashing cursor in the top left.

Hitting Ctrl-Alt-Del rebooted the machine.

I can get into Safe mode no problems and no error messages appear.

Any ideas ?

Ta

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beemerboy

first thing, i would reseat all the cards and ram mate
get all the dust out etc.

have you got a recovery disk for it.

sounds like hardware, as opposed to an win95 problem.

without fiddling, its difficult to diagnose.

do what i do, pull a few things about, whack a few other things, wiggle some wires etc.

usually does the trick.

dont be scared...

BB

blair

I think the RAM is ok - it does the initial memory check and checks the BIOS settings no problem.

I did wonder about it maybe being something that had given up the ghost on one of the cards.

I'll give its innards a few prods and pokes tonight and see if anything moves.

I did have a recovery disk somewhere - I'm sure I did, all I have to do is find the damn thing.

Does the fact I can get it into safe mode and access my files from there mean that I can rule out a video card or disc controller failure ?

beemerboy

you cant rule out vid card, as you will be in safe mode 16 colours low res etc...

but the hard drive sounds ok.

Jye

Once in safe mode what happens when you reboot as normal?

blair

Once it's into safe mode if I re-boot it falls over again in exactly the same way as described above !

If I can't locate my boot disk for this can I create one from within safe mode that will let me re-boot without loading all the drivers and then add them back in one by one ?

Cheers

A

Jye

And device manager shows no problems I take it?

blair

Didn't see any - but I didn;t have much time to look at it this morning.

I'll have another look tonight and report back

Thanks

A

HHxx

Boot up normally but with logging enabled?

blair

Absolutely nothing wrong with any of the devices (as far as I can tell in safe mode)

Did a full DoS scandisk (took me a while to remember how to do that!) last night and there is nothing wrong with the hard drive.

Looking at the bootlog everything loaded okay apart from a few fonts. Surely this wouldn't cause it to go **** up would it ?

It's looking more and more like I might need to re-install Win 95 I think. Some more questions (apologies if the answers are obvious)

What will I lose if I do this

I didn't get installation discs with the PC but IIRC there is an image of them on the hard drive. What directory will these be in?

Any other ideas on how to try and find the problem ? I suggested throwing the damn thing out the window but the Mrs doesnt think that would fix anything other than my frustration

Thanks again

A

Jye

Just re-install Windows over itself, this might cure it, might not. You 'shouldnt' lose any of your other data, files etc this way though, but back up all your email settings and address books etc and copy any really important stuff to CD, zip, floppy or even slave another HD to the 95 machine. If this fails I'd format it and try a fresh install with the old drivers that originally came with the machine and take it from there.

Jye

LOL, no install disc, what a bind, those early OEM manufactures got away with murder

Im sure you could find a dusty old copy of Win 95 going free about here, I mean its an antique now but worth nowt as its utter c**p

Graphics555

This may sound silly but, I've known W95 machines to fail to boot up correctly if the temp directory is too full. Try booting in dos mode and then delete the contents of c:\temp and c:\windows\temp.

blair

Thanks for the replies.

I'll try the simple ones first and delete the contents of the temp directories tonight. I'm keeping my fingers crossed but I in my experience the solution is never that simple !

I'm willing to give it a try though, just in case

Anyone happen to have a copy of the windows 95 install disks kicking around somewhere and if so can I borrow them ?

Cheers

A

scoobysnacks

Before you re-install Windows 95, you could remove the graphics and maybe sound card in device manager in safe mode to see if it then lets you boot up in 'normal' mode as it may be a corrupt software driver problem. You could also try reming out the display.drv=pnpdrvr.drv line in system.ini which gave me a few problems once with starting Windows...
Otherwise:
If you have the Windows 95 installation files on your hard disk you will find them in a directory called \options\cabs if I remember correctly. Maybe c:\windows\options\cabs or c:\windows\system\options\cabs. Do a search in Safe mode for cabs. If you find these files, you can run setup.exe in this directory from the dos prompt without the need for a CD.

[Edited by scoobysnacks - 5/23/2003 2:05:54 PM]

blair

Thanks again for all the advice.

I get the feeling that getting this damned PC up and runnign is going to be this weekends project!

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