Need Help Laptop will not boot

the Guru

Hi Folks im in serious trouble here, my GF's laptop with all her work stuff is fooked or more to the point I have fooked it and I need to get it unfooked before she fooks me .....

OS W98, Gateway Solo 5300.

when it starts it runs scandisk as it will not shut down properly , I then get a message
"Invalid VxD dynamic link call from VPROT95(01) + 000029E to device "0028", service 8029.
your windows configuration is invalid. Run the windows set up program again to correct this problem."

(I dont have the disck as its a company laptop)

it then tells me to startup in safemode fine I go into safemode.

I get a illegal operation alert box advising that explorer will be shut down.

When in safe mode there are no programmes on the screen , the windows / start does not work and I can right click for properties.

Anyone know what the hell is wrong

I have also tried to go into the BIOS setup utility and boot from the D Drive as I have a copy of W2k but the down key does not work

Capt'n Midnight

not good - what were you doing - 'cos it's much easier to undo then to guess what happened

uplug any perheripal / usb stuff
and try again

-

(not likely to work and only if all else fails)

boot to dos and backup the registry
CD windows
dir *.da0 /ah - to see if you have a backup if so then

MD BAK
XCOPY *.DA? BAK /h /s

Xcopy system.da0 system.dat
xcopy user.da0 user.dat

-

are you sure its VPROT95 ?

the Guru

I dont have anything plugged into the laptop

Yes Im sure its VPROT95

I have typed dir *.da0 /ah it tells me that Volume in C has no label volume serial number is 3857-1504 Directory of C:WINDOWS

$ausage$

Get a Knoppix CD and take all teh docs off you need then reformat i say.

Hint #1 - no disk
Hint #2 - company laptop
Hint #3 - someone else works for the company

Capt'n Midnight

No Da0 (DA Zero) file means no backup copy of the registry.

Again - what if anything was changed recently - any chance it could be a virus or something off the internet ?

Any funny noises from the HDD ?

the Guru

$ausage$ wrote:

Get a Knoppix CD and take all teh docs off you need then reformat i say.

Hint #1 - no disk
Hint #2 - company laptop
Hint #3 - someone else works for the company

I dont think thats going to work as I cant boot from the D Drive

the Guru

Any idea's folks im in a hole with no shovel :-)

Capt'n Midnight

you still haven't said if you did anything or nothing - install / uninstall / patch / upgrade etc ???

http://miataru.computing.net/windows95/wwwboard/forum/108209.html

I just installed a new modem, controller based US Robotics PCI, and I had uninstalled the previous modem and it's software. I dual boot between '98 and 2000 on a fat 32. I have absolutely no probs under the Win 2K, but when I first booted under '98, I got a message during the boot sequence: Invalid VxD dynamic link call from VSDATA95(01)+00014F6 A to device "0028", service 8029. I tried to get into the system several times to no avail. I solved this problem (sort of) by going into the system in safe mode and uninstalling the Zone Alarm. It boots in just fine now except there's no cursor, AND I'm stuck in 16 colors. I figured that perhaps I had a video card driver prob, so I re-installed the drivers to the card, but it still does the same. I still have to do all this without the cursor...(you don't realize how much you enjoy having a cursor until it's gone!) I'm hoping that someone may have some ideas before I try a half a million things & then resort to "Restore". It all works fine in Windows 2000. Here's the specs on my PC:
Compaq Presario 7470
K6-2 533
Windows 98 & 2000 dual boot.
GeForce 2 PCI video card
384 megs of RAM
Logitech Optical Scroll Mouse

Real straw clutching stuff - if you are used to windows 3.1 or Nt 3.5 - this will bypass explorer and maybe get you in a bit further
edit c:\windows\system.ini change shell=explorer.exe to shell=progman.exe
or shell=taskman.exe if you want to close background stuff
(or is it taskmgr.exe ?)
file - run - control.exe to get in to add/remove or whatever - depends on what caused it to become pearoid.

have a look at
http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=351046

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/lofiversion/index.php/t33566.html

the Guru

I installed mcafee antivirus and cleaned some viruses , after that it just went nuts I will try what you have advised and take it from there

MrVestek

the Guru wrote:

I installed mcafee antivirus and cleaned some viruses , after that it just went nuts I will try what you have advised and take it from there

I'd go with the whole Knoppix idea. Boot up the laptop with the Knoppix live CD, go into your NTFS partition (remember that Linux can't safely write to NTFS yet, only read) and copy any important docs over and burn them onto a cd or dvd. Format, reinstall.

Capt'n Midnight

Achilles wrote:

copy any important docs over and burn them onto a cd or dvd. Format, reinstall.

the problem is that the Laptop belongs to someone elses company so you can't format it. Let their IT sort it out. I'm sure they would rather have to clean a boked 98 than possible data recovery on a overwritten drive .

NB. It's running 98 so may have many years work on it. Also may have docs from other apps not in use by current user, just because she (the user) doesn't recognise a doc doesn't mean a previous owner didn't use it as such. Yes the data should have been backed up - but this is the real world and formatting the drive is a guaranteed way of painting yourself in to a corner - important docs tend to be needed about two weeks later ( there must be a law for that )

Also he don't have a windows 98 CD
And isn't bootable etc.


If you are tempted to do format of 98 - boot in to command prompt and rename Windows and "Program files" folders before the new install
you may also have to rename windows\win.com to something else if it gets snotty about an OS already on the system

Hang about there should also be a user.??? and system.??? in the root folder from the original install - try copying these into the windows folder after backing up the current reg files.

you may need to modify the autoexec.bat file to include the MSCDEX line to get CD working in command prompt - this would allow you to copy the win98 folder to C: and then run setup there.

probably best to do a DOS based virus scan on the sytem to rule out boot sector viruses ( I'd doubt that's the problem - but beats a formatting the drive ! )

the Guru

Right folks I will have a crack at it to and let you know the outcome capt thanks for your help so far hopefully it will work I told her over the weekend and she was not happy , but at least I got all the most important docs off and put them onto her new laptop 2 weeks ago

MrVestek

Something just struck me, the guru comes to boards.ie for help... maybe this is where he was getting his cheats all along.

the Guru

Achilles, is there any where else to get help.

Cheers Folks got it sorted a grueling 36 hour fiasco, installed W2K on top and now its back to normal , touch wood.

Cryos

did nobody tell him about the windows 98 setup files in the options directory in c:\windows ? could of saved him some trouble :P

Capt'n Midnight

Blitz wrote:

did nobody tell him about the windows 98 setup files in the options directory in c:\windows ? could of saved him some trouble :P

You still need the files from Disk 1 too, not sure if need some from disk 2 too.
setup.exe is one of the main files missing.