bullines..... i need help!!!

[biss03]

i've tried the other links from bullines and even the 98 one give me the NTLDR is missing message.

 

now what do i do?

[Teh Bear without Brains kinda idiot]

In win 98 computer go to start->run type command

 

In the shell window in prompt type

format a: /s

after formating type exit

try this disk

 

HTH

[mayday]

I had a exe once that killed the boot sector and made the hard drive virtually dead. then you could do a fresh install. I will see if I can find it. definetly not a toy

[biss03]

somehow, i was able to get the pc to give me the option of booting from cd. so i put the ME cd in and am now (hopefully) reinstalling ME again.

[Teh Bear without Brains kinda idiot]

mAYDAY .

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I had a exe once that killed the boot sector and made the hard drive virtually dead.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~`

fOR THIS THINGS try this

boot From win 98 floppy disk

in prompt type

fdisk /MBR

(this is nonspecified inner Microsoft switch for Master boot record restoration )

Can be applied to any Win OS

HTH

WTHh

[biss03]

i'm still getting the trouble with updating the config files as stated in the original post. however, i've been able to get further into the reinstall and everytime it restarts it tries to update again and gets the same problem. it seems to be continuing with the reinstall but i'm not sure what effect not being able to update the config files will have. anyone have any ideas.

[Teh Bear without Brains kinda idiot]

Can you start in the safe mode ?

[biss03]

it has reinstalled ME successfully but this did not solve my problem. i now need to try formating the drive before reinstalling ME i guess.

[Bullines]

You definitely need to format that hard disk. If worse comes to worse, try other Windows 95/98/98SE or ME boot disks from here.

[Jim at Gentex]

Make sure you copy your CD-ROM driver to a floppy if it's not already on your boot disk before you format the hard drive! Otherwise the CD-ROM drive may not be recognized and you will not be able to do a clean reinstall.

 

Just my 2 cents.

[Bullines]

All of the bootdisks from Bootdisk.com include generic CD-ROM drivers.

[Brent Wilkerson]

+1 Bullines....

 

I've never seen it not find a CD-ROM driver yet for any CD Drive. It's the only thing MS did 100%

[Teh Bear without Brains kinda idiot]

Also if you made a disk from Win98 ->control panel->add/remove software /windows components->make boot disk .

HTH

WTHH

[Teh Bear without Brains kinda idiot]

~~~~~~~~~~~~

I've never seen it not find a CD-ROM driver yet for any CD Drive. It's the only thing MS did 100%

~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Well , I`ve seen ,

But I have good collection of dos drivers

[biss03]

bullines..is there any other way to format the hard drive? i can't get to the prompt from the disk.

 

can i do it from a command prompt by pulling up the dos window?

[Bullines]

Are you saying that you can never boot from the floppy drive? Does the floppy drive even work? You never see a prompt like A:>?

 

You cannot format the drive that Windows is installed on from a command prompt in Windows.

[Teh Bear without Brains kinda idiot]

Yes ,what Bullines saiz !

 

Biss ,it looks like you have a life-time experience !

[biss03]

yes the floppy drive works. i used it to back up all her files.

 

by booting up do you mean putting it in the drive and then powering up the computer? if yes, then no. i've been unable to boot with the floppy. i've never been given the option with the A:> prompt. how do i get it? is there any other way?

[Bullines]

In your BIOS, you must be sure that the floppy drive is your first boot device. Save your changes and reboot with the boot disk in the floppy drive.

 

If this doesn't work, you could try something a little sneaker. I'm assuming you have no problems booting from a CD. If that's the case, borrow a Windows 2000/XP CD from someone and boot off of that. Start the setup and when it gets to the point that you can format, format your drive with FAT (NTFS is unreadable by Windows 95/98/ME). When it's done formatting, but before it begins to copy files, reboot the computer and put your WinME CD in right away (removing the other CD first, of course). The ME installation should then find a cleanly formatted drive to install itself on.

[Jim at Gentex]

quote:

---

I've never seen it not find a CD-ROM driver yet for any CD Drive. It's the only thing MS did 100%

---

I mentioned it b/c it happened to a friend of mine. He had an older Packard Bell PC and when he wanted to reinstall Windows after formatting the HD, it wouldn't recognize the CD-ROM drive at all! At the time, I downloaded a driver for him that he had to manually install in order to proceed but it set him back a bit of time. I can't recall now but it was some off-brand CD-ROM drive that came with the computer when he bought it. Anyway, it worked out in the end but I never forgot that experience. It's a beautiful thing when we can learn from the mistakes of OTHER PEOPLE!

[Teh Bear without Brains kinda idiot]

~~~~~~~~~~~

by booting up do you mean putting it in the drive and then powering up the computer? if yes, then no

~~~~~~~~~~

Man ,you kill me ,you said bfore that you do made boot from floppy .

Select teh legacy floppy drive in Bios settings as a first boot device !

 

Teh outcrier

[biss03]

ok ok. i figured out why the boot floppy's weren't working. i didn't realize i needed to run the .exe file first and then use the disk. now it boots to a command prompt A:>

 

but when i type in FORMAT C: it says bad command or filename.

 

any ideas?

[Jim at Gentex]

DOS is all about syntax.

format C: is a bad command, but format C: is a good command...u see?

 

Good luck w/ solving your problem. It sounds like you are headed in the right direction!

[Teh Bear without Brains kinda idiot]

Make sure you really have format.com file on floppy !

Type

a:

dir for*.*

 

to see if you really have it

 

You must see in reply something like

.....

Format.com size ....

If you do not have it ,copy it from win98 computer

Or I can put it on ftp for a dos version you

really have

in prompt type command :

ver

put here the reply that dos makes

 

HTH

WTHH

[Bullines]

Oops, that one doesn't include format.com. Create a second bootdisk using No Ramdrive using this. After you've booted using the first boot disk that you made, take it out and put the second one in. Then run:

 

format C: