Problems booting up!! Windows 98

[shane1708]

I'm having big problems starting up.
I've serched and tried to start up in safe mode but as it starts in safe mode it says YOUR PROGRAM IS MAKING AN ILLIGAL LINK CALL TO A DLL FILE.
Close.
I try to close the box, but get no further.
Is there a way that i can start win 98 in safe command prompt mode?, or sort this in bios?
Any help, more than welcome.

cheers,

Shane.

[dahlarbear]

1.  More information please:
    o  Operating System.  Windows 98 or Windows 98 Second Edition?
    o  Computer Make/Model Number or Make/Model Number of motherboard if not a "Brand Name" computer configuration.
    o  Total amount of system RAM installed.
    o  Video card make/model number, if known?  Or is it onboard video?
    o  Which anti-virus, anti-malware, anti-adware, firewall software are you using, if any?
    o  Do you have a valid installation CD for your operating system?


2.  Problem Description.  What happens exactly, error messages, if any, what happened before this started, what you have tried.

I've serched and tried to start up in safe mode but as it starts in safe mode it says YOUR PROGRAM IS MAKING AN ILLIGAL LINK CALL TO A DLL FILE.

Does it identify which "program" or "DLL" file is involved?  Can you provide the exact error message (so we can do "exact" substring searches thru google)?

I'm assuming it doesn't start in "Normal" mode.  What are the symptoms when you try to boot to "Normal" mode?


3.  Command Prompt Mode.  I'm not sure if it's part of "Safe Mode", but you should be able to boot to "Command Prompt Only" via the "Startup Menu.

Startup Menu.  Hold down the F8 function key (or tap it about once per second or faster) as you power on the system.

If F8 doesn't work for you, restart your computer and hold down the CTRL key during the Power On Self Test (POST).  Holding down CTRL may interfere with some POST chores, such as setting up the keyboard or initializing a SCSI controller.  If this happens just release CTRL until the POST resumes, and then hold it down again.

Once the POST is complete, the Startup menu should appear:

Microsoft Windows 98 Startup Menu
============================

    1.  Normal
    2.  Logged (\BOOTLOG.TXT)
    3.  Safe mode
    4.  Step-by-step confirmation
    5.  Command prompt only
    6.  Safe mode command prompt only
    7.  Previous version of MS-DOS

Select the "Command prompt only" option and hit "Enter".

[shane1708]

In normal mode it loads the clouds background but no icons, the screen dosn't seem to be frozen (the mouse still moves the arrow).
I did the F8 thing to get safe mode, i'll try again to get the exact error code.
It's windows 98, not SE. Pentiun II 233mhz.
the machine dosen't hold that much value to me,( it is 10 years old now), but i would like to retreive some files, photos and such.
is there another way to do this? mabye swap the hard drive to another machine.

many thanks,

shane.

[dahlarbear]

1.  Normal Mode.

In normal mode it loads the clouds background but no icons, the screen dosn't seem to be frozen (the mouse still moves the arrow).

Is there a "task bar" at the bottom with the "Start" button on left.  If there is, can you get to "Run" dialog box via "Start" -> "Run"?

2.  Startup Menu.

I did the F8 thing to get safe mode, i'll try again to get the exact error code.

If you can do the F8 thing to get to safe mode, I'm assuming you have access to the "Command Prompt Only" mode which should successfully boot you into MS-DOS.

From MS-DOS you can execute "scandisk" to verify/fix the integrity of the file system (and optionally scan the disk surface for errors/bad spots).  You can also execute "scanreg" to optimize, fix, or verify the integrity of the current registry file.  It can also be used to display list of registry backups and/or restore from registry backup file.  By default, the system saves the last five registry backups, which are automatically created each day Windows is running (one per day).
 
For example:
    > scandisk /?           - to display command syntax and help info
    > scanreg /?            - to display command syntax and help info

    > scandisk /all          - to scan all disk file systems for errors
    > scanreg                 - verify integrity of current registry file
    > scanreg /opt          - optimize registry by removing deleted entries
    > scanreg /fix            - correct structural errors within registry
    > scanreg /restore    - restore registry from a backup version.

The "Logged" and "Step-by-Step Confirmation" Startup Menu options may also be used to troubleshoot the Normal Mode boot process.

It's windows 98, not SE. Pentiun II 233mhz.
the machine dosen't hold that much value to me,( it is 10 years old now), but i would like to retreive some files, photos and such.
is there another way to do this? mabye swap the hard drive to another machine.

Yes, you can swap the hard drive to another machine as a "slave" drive.  You'd want to check your current BIOS first to determine whether the hard drive parameters were set "manually" or being auto detected because you'd want it configured same way in the other machine.  If you mess with the sector address translation algorithm (the hard drive BIOS parameters), you would probably corrupt the data on the hard drive (because you'd be reading and/or writing to the wrong sector addresses).

[shane1708]

Hi,
after trying again in normal mode where i get the clouds (but no task bar) i've tried Alt + F4 and Alt, Ctrl + Delete, after a while i get this message,
Fatal exeption OE has occurred at 023F : BFF9DBA7. The current aplication will be terminated.
MSgsrv 32 caused an invalid page fault in module KERNEL32.DDL at 023f:bff9dba7.

Thanks for your help,

shane.