Win 95 crash!

nore

Help please!
My PC crashed and it won't start up fully anymore. I was browsing the Internet and it went to a darkscreen and threw up an error. I'm in the lazy habit, being not very tech-savvy, of just powering-off and rebooting when something like this happens - it usually recovers itself. But this time it didn't...
It goes so far... and then it comes to a dark screen with a flashing underscore in the topleft and the figures 7F in the topright and after grinding at the floppy-drive and then internally (I presume the hard-drive), it just hangs there...
Help please!

Xterminator

Do you have a windows bootdisk?

Try booting up off the disk, and do an fdisk /mbr and remove disk and reboot, see what happens.

If it does not work you can boot up off the disk, and change prompt to the c drive
by typing c: and hitting enter. It might give an error, but if not you can go to the cab file directory, often c:\windows\option\cabs and run setup. This does not lose data or programmes when run on a 95 machine.

X

nore

Thanks for the reply, xterminator...
Please bear with my lack of tech know-how...
Is a boot-disk something I should have gotten with the PC? (I bought it second-hand and I'm not sure that I did get one.)
Is a boot-disk unique to an individual machine? Or can I buy one somewhere?

irishgeo

a bootdisk is a disk that you create in windows 95. its the first thing you should do. but dont worry about it. any windows boot bdisk will do you. a boot disk is a list of programs that help you restart you computer when things go badly wrong.

get on do somebody who has a computerand ask then can you borrow their boot disk or ask then to create one for you.

Meh

Or you could download one from http://www.bootdisk.com if you have another working PC (which you obviously do if you're posting here...)

Clinical Waste

Could he not just turn the PC on, hold down the F8 key until the Windows boot menu appears, choose 'command prompt only' and then run 'fdisk /mbr' from there?

SantaHoe

I think the most important bit here is to know exactly when it stops loading...

If it crashes before the text - "Starting Windows 95", then F8 isn't going to work... you'll need to try booting from a floppy or CD.
In which case I reckon an 'fdisk /mbr' and 'sys c:' might do the trick once you reach the command prompt.

If it's crashing after the small "Starting Windows" text, then holding F8 should do nicely... in that case - I'd say 'scanreg /restore' at the command prompt should sort out most w0nkey windows problems (or is that win98 only?! it's been a long time )

Basically where you want to get right now is to the command prompt... if you can reach something resembling a C:\> you can relax

_CreeD_

Anybody out there remember Safe-Mode....No?....:)

Do the F8 thingy and from the menu try SAFE MODE first. This loads a very basic version of windows. If it loads up then chances are it can be fixed. If it doesn't then you know you're in for an uphill battle.
If it doesn' load up that way try the FDISK/MBR tip above (Though its unlikely to be the problem since it seems you can boot to an extent).
If it does boot with Safe mode. Try a normal boot but hold down SHIFT until the system should have entered windows. This will stop any Startup applications running. If that works then empty all shortcuts from C:\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup, Run Sysedit and Open the Win.ini file - put ; in front of the RUN and LOAD lines. Run REGEDIT and look for HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\MICROSOFT\WINDOWS\CURRENTVERSION\RUN and RUNONCE. Delete anything inside these keys.
Reboot...
If its still not working. Boot in safe mode again, go to DISPLAY PROPERTIES / SETTINGS / ADVANCED / ADAPTER / CHANGE and look through the list for STANDARD DISPLAY / VGA. Load it and reboot. If that works then just reinstall the correct Vid driver for your Card.

No luck either way, use the steps above to try SCANREG /FIX first (yes it is for Win98 only). Then SCANREG /Restore if that fails.
Also Run SCANDISK C:

Xterminator

If you read the original post, Creed, user describes what he sees when booting.( just a flashing cusor in the screen.)

Now I know from years of consumer tech support, this means windows is not launching, and thats why i reccomended what i did.

Still if he could get into safe mode windows, your post makes sense.

X

Renton

Lads, Read again, carefully

* 7F flashing on the Top Right.
* Win95

These two facts lead me to believe that this is an Old IBM Machine, and thats an Error in the Bios/Cmos, not while booting.

Best guess is to goto the manufacturers website, and look up that Code.

(If you remember, when you booted before, it would go thru numbers A1 A2 A3 etc and then it would proceed to boot)

I know you said you're not very technologically minded, but I think this is one you're gonna have to bring to a computer shop to get sorted

I recommend Laser Computers (01 2962331), they'll sort your problem for you most likely.

Good Luck

- Rent

nore

Yes, indeed, it is an old IBM machine, Renton!
And I do now believe that I have got problems external to Windows - it was suggested to me over the weekend that most likely my hard-drive will need replacing?
Anyway thanks for the suggestions and likewise to everyone else who posted. I did download the bootdisk but it didnt have any effect. I'll look into this IBM-related stuff and see what happens.

SantaHoe

Hmm, old IBM machine...
Check out [ www.pc.ibm.com/support ], the knowledge-base there is huge ... and the forums are monitored by IBM tech guys (and good ones at that).

A search for "7F" turned up a page of POST stages... so I recon your BIOS may be acting up, or you've got some b0rked hardware.