w98 booting up

[ellenmack]

I had some work done on my old computer and now it will only boot up part way and stop. Since it has a lot of info on it that I want to access and is the only machine I can print from, I would like to have it available to use again. I am using my new laptop for access to the internet. Can anyone help me?:rolleyes:

[DavidRyan]

Have you tried starting up in safe mode?
If so, and it hangs partway through the load, on which file does it hang?

[ellenmack]

Have you tried starting up in safe mode? If so, and it hangs partway through the load, on which file does it hang?

I used safe mode and it quit responding after checking Drive C for errors.

[DavidRyan]

With scandisc? What if you skip the check.

[Pmaster]

At what stage in the boot process does it halt, ie memory check,,

ect.. getinng any error messages if so what are they.

[ellenmack]

After scan disc checks C drive for errors. No error messages, just a blank scree with a - flashing in the top left hand corner.

[ellenmack]

Yes, with scan disc. I don't know how to skip the scan.

[DavidRyan]

A blank screen with a blinking hyphen opften means a dud Master Boot Record. You can restore it by booting to a floppy which contains fdisk, and running

fdisk /mbr

at the command prompt. More details at this MSKB article .

[yogi_bear_2k2]

Also, the other suggestion could be to acquire a hard disk caddy. This will allow you to put the hard drive onto your Laptop via USB and backup all the important files you want to keep from there. Then, you should just be able to re-install windows from scratch as if it was a new hard drive.