system information problem (W98)

[simpatico]

when I try to open the system information from the start menu I get this message: this application or dll. cannot be loaded on win95 or on win 3.1 it takes advantage of unicode feature only available on win NT -OK
the next message says: The mfc42 dll. file cannot start Check the file to determine the problem OK. I'm not sure how to fix this problem. And here is another strange thing that I've found in explorer program files, the file of win NT and in it is, the accessory file with pin ball game , and kodak image view. And is this folder part of w98se or what?..... informed help is appreciated! Thanks/images/forums/icons/smile.gif

[TonyKlein]

Restore Mfc42.dll to your Windows System directory from the Winndows CD-ROM.

Very easy to do using SFC:

Go to Start/run, and type SFC.
Choose 'Extract One File From Installation Disk'.
Type Mfc42.dll, not worrying about its location. Then, click Start.

Next to 'Restore From', type in or browse for the file’s location, which is probably in the Win98 folder of your installation CD-ROM (typically D:\Win98), or in your Windows\Options\Cabs folder, as the case may be.

Then, next to 'Save File In', enter, or browse to C:\Windows\System, and click OK. System File Checker looks for the file, saves it as you requested, and then tells you that 'the file has been successfully extracted'.

Subsequently, reboot.

[simpatico]

TonyKlein that didn't do it I did just as you prescribed, to the letter, but after the reboot I got the same pop up and no SI, what else is there for me to do, should I restore the folder win NT from the recycler bin?

[simpatico]

I started this tread to learn how to fix a problem that is still pending, and it seems that there is no one else to help with this matter. I'm a bit surprised, 'cause this is a win98se problem, and I would like to think that there is enough knowledge accumulated since (4years) to fix this type of issue../images/forums/icons/smile.gif thanks!

[Andy-S]

Have you had a dual install on your system recently? Looks like some of your system files are the wrong versions.

Cheers
Andy

[Nana]

Simpatico,

It's quite possible nobody has experienced the same error that you've described. Also, you had the misfortune of posting your question on the Friday of a four day holiday weekend in the US. Don't give up hope yet.

One little suggestion. Please don't use sarcasm. It offends many people & they don't respond because of it.

Also, your opening post asking for "informed" assistance may have put people off, too. Anyone posting replies considers themselves "informed". Believe me, I know it isn't always true. I only have to look as far as myself to know that!

Hope you get an answer,
Nana /images/forums/icons/smile.gif

[simpatico]

Andy-s I've been out of town, but I'm back and ready to take up this pestering problem with system information, so far I had no luck in fixing it, and as far as my having installed other OS in my rig, yes I've installed w2k and wxp pro in the appropriate partitions all the part's are formatted with fat 32.
c:\w98se

e:\w2k pro

f:\wxp pro

So now after trying to install the mfc42u.dll from the cd in sfc but the file was not found on the cd and now the problems is exactly the same as before I tried different things to fix it !! Any suggestions on how to approach this problem so that it can be fixed ! thanks

[mysterywolf]

NT is a unicode OS. it is 32 bit and allows for filenames up to 255 chars, and upper/lower case etc etc. hence no use to win3.1 or win95. but win98se can deal with it. So, that message is not lying. Your pc (or rather some important system files ) has been downgraded and now believes it is an earlier version of windows!!
this is likely to have happened as a result of installing an old old app (games are a fave culprit!), which were never designed for anything beyond win95. this might be reversed by SFC but in your case that seems to be a casualty itself!. if you can't remember what you installed (though even an uninstall might not work now!), you might be able to work out (by date created search) the affected files. but its messy. trouble is that it could be just a couple of files need replacing or it could be many...you can't say. it might be as simple as the fact that you booted from an old floppy and caused this. then simply creating a win98 bootdisk on another good pc and SYS could fix it! there could be entries in autoexec/config.sys and /or win/sys.ini to consider... maybe registry too.
a re-install of windows over the top (ie from within an up and running windows would be quick and easy and non-destructive but would re-use any such faulty entries!

before any drastic action you really need to think back to what you did. such things aren't faults/corruptions. something has been done by a user to do it. e.g. install, floppy boot and some action, cd boot and part/failed install. some tweak. an attemted repair after a minor fault. some basic files (eg command.com, io.sys,msdos.sys, ver, win.com, mfc42 etc etc) have been REPLACED.

msinfo32.exe (=SI) can be run in safe mode and even from a dos prompt ( /? for help), but you have to get the path right.
you might even have msinfo16 ???

if you want a fix rather than a fresh start you need more info.

[Andy-S]

You said in your original post should I restore the WIN NT folder from the recycle bin. Is this when your problems started i.e. when you deleted the WIN NT folder?

Also why do you need W98, W2K and XP on a single system?

Cheers
Andy

[mysterywolf]

good call. i missed the deletion comment!

[Andy-S]

Yeah, I missed it the first time as well. I think some Gremlin added it at a later date /images/forums/icons/smile.gif

Cheers
Andy

[simpatico]

Andy-S . IN this post I'll try to explain the whole story on what I did before and after the problem started. I goes this way: Some time back, I got interested in norton ghost , and learned how to ghost an image and I did it correctly 3 times,


but before ghosting I needed to shrink my drive from 6gb of saved files , programs, and games to a manageable and I did it by uninstalling some and saving others to CD's and ended with 2.4 gb, and after a quick scan and a difrag saved one ghosted image to a spare disk and the other two I burned to CD's, without any problems with win98se.

Then later on PQ partition magic became my next learning experience, and after reading extensively about it, I partitioned my disk with two additional partitions on my 60gb disk so I ended up with c:\w98
e:\ empty
f:\ empty , both with fat 32.

Later on I installed w2k pro on the e:\ drive without a glitch smooth as silk, and it worked perfectly.

Some times later a friend gave me wxp pro 'cause he couldn't install it in his old sony vaio laptop, (no upgrades for his bios) and I immediately learned more to see what's up with wxp pro that everybody was talking about.

And since my rig is a 500mhz matsonic board (with the board drivers CD) with 256 ram and a good size drive 60gb 7200, so I checked wxp compatibility test and all that I needed was to upgrade the ECDC, and off I went to install wxp pro on the f:\part, and again the installation was flawless but with two glitches, one was the modem, and a w2k driver fixed it just fine and the other was the sound driver that drove me crazy.

So after posting the problem with win drive, a great individual named Andy-S, with great patience helped me to find the driver for it and the problem was\is fixed!
Some time ago I needed to update my norton untivirus 2002 on the c:\win98se drive, but after the update something went horribly wrong 'cause after the update and upon reboot I couldn't get back to win 98, and safe mode was the only option to windows, and in safe mode I couldn't uninstall norton at all , after checking around for few hours with no solutions in sight , I decided to test my ghosted images of w98se on the CD's that I've created , and restore the system back to the original configuration,for the first time,
and again the restore went as smooth as promised by norton and in all the documents that I've read( it took about 30 min or so to do the job.)

But I forgot to consider that the restored image did not contain the full MBR file, which was created after the ghosted image, and in restoring I soon realized the I couldn't boot to ether w2kpro or wxp pro , so I took the problem as a learning experience, and decided to reformat and reinstall both w2k pro and wxp pro and I did thusly:

I reformatting both , the e:\ w2k pro, and f:\wxp pro I reinstalled both in this way, I first opened the My Computer folder, and open the drive where I intend to install the OS and I create a folder and name it the OS in question and then copy the win CD I open it then I highlight all the folders and drag and drop'em onto the created folder, on the specified drive after the copying is completed, the CD is withdrawn from the bay,
then, I usually close as many as possible background running stuff, and proceed to install the OS from the folder (this way I think is safer to install a program and no chance that the rom skip a bit or two) and after the installation is complete I usually delete the win folder after a while.

But with wxp pro I made a mistake which prove to be bothersome..... instead of copying the wxp pro files to a folder as prescribed , I copied the wxp CD folders directly to the selected drive and proceeded to install wxp pro, and the installation went fine, but now I didn't have a folder to delete if I wanted to and the drive letter had the install icon on it and whenever I clicked on the icon (in my computer folder or in explorer the wxp pro installation program would open up)

so to fix this I renamed that file and several other files that was responsible for the glitch and deleted them all afterward, including the i386 folder in explorer and that fixed the disturbing space gobbling problem.

Now that the MBR works properly, I booted to w98se and uninstalled norton 2002 untivirus and reinstalled it, and and the update worked without a problem, upon reboot so in checking things up if all is OK with the ghosted image and started to open all the programs in the ghosted and installed w98se image, and that's when I stumbled into the System Information problem of the mfc42u.dll file (the correct file name) and also while checking explorer I indeed deleted the folder winNT that was resident in the programs files folder, but I did that "after" the discovered problem with SI and since it did nothing to correct the SI problem, as a precautionary move I restored it , so now essentially the problem is exactly the same as when I first detected it and somehow described it on the post. PS: the windowsNT folder have a pinball game that I believe had installed from floppy and was long time ago and is compatible with w98 but now it doesn't show up in the start menu programs\games and I don't remember uninstalling it although, I might have. So why installing w2k pro and xp pro? First both of these OS are very stable, unlike w98se which require constant care and tunning and second, it's good to learn about these systems 'cause M$ it's not going to support w98se, and that's real soon! And most games and progs, are made to xp specs, and lastly it's the future...

I might have made this dissertation a bit too long but this is the compete history of what happened as far as I remember it....Thanks /images/forums/icons/smile.gif

[mysterywolf]

firstly a couple of points..... if your ghost is ver 6 or less then it can screw any system which contains an xp installation. same applies to nav2001, but 2003 is okay...dunno about 2002 but you should check!
the nt folder with win98se is part of plus! and if i remember right the pinball thing is merely the inf and nothing more. that folder is normal so don't get sidetracked by that.

i tried my hardest to get a clear picture of your process but .... did you...

1. install 98
2. install 2000
3. install xp
4. create a 98 image.
5. restore from that image.

if that's not the order, or if you updated/service packed 2000 / xp between 4 and 5 then that is asking for problems.

by copying full contents of a bootable cd to disk you are copying the bootable files as well!! including autorun and the startup icon...hence your experience with the icon and its behavior...and this is another possible source of the wrong version files.

i hope you get it sorted, but if i'm really honest the best advice i could give is to ask yourself 'am i doing this because i need to or because i can? and if it doesn't justify a bit of reading up on the tech side first then is it really needed that much?'

if you are honest and accept that its not a need but fun with toys then there is nothing at all wrong with that. but you can expect problems. again nothing wrong there...we all learn more that way. but its a choice that needs facing.

[Andy-S]

Simpatico,

Looks like you have all your relevant information backed up so my suggestion would be this:

1. Determine whether or not you want all 3 OS's.
2. Once you know what ones you want to keep, format all partitions and install them in this order, W98, W2K, XP ensuring that each installation is on a separate partition
3. Copy over all your relevant data that was backed up to CD.

When installing any of the OS's just install it from the CD.

This will give you a clean start which is probably what you need at the moment.

Cheers
Andy

[simpatico]

If I format c:\ and reninstall w98 will windows keep the boot ini file as they are now! thanks...

[Andy-S]

No, if you install W98 you will lose all the current boot settings. W98 will overwrite the boot sector with it's own.

Cheers
Andy

[simpatico]

Andy-S there must be a way to a fix for the boot ini now, I have saved the boot ini file to a floopy, and if I would copy\paste the saved file to the new boot ini would this resolve the issue....?

[Andy-S]

There are several posts in this forum that talk about how to recover from installing Windows 98 and then recovering the boot settings. You have to copy Boot.ini, Bootsect.dos, Ntdetect.com, and Ntldr to a floppy and restore them once you've re-installed Windows 98.

Cheers
Andy

[simpatico]

Thank you Andy-S and have a happy holidays!!/images/forums/icons/smile.gif /images/forums/icons/smile.gif

[Andy-S]

Thanks. You too have a great holiday.

Cheers
Andy

[simpatico]

Mysterywolf, I didn't mean to ignore you! in fact I read your post and found it very informative, I like to Thank you for it, and I wish you the best for the holidays.../images/forums/icons/smile.gif

[mysterywolf]

never crossed my mind you had...........till now!!!!

but thanks for the greeting and you have a good one too!

[simpatico]

I've copied the boot ini , bootsect.dos, ntdetect.com, and ntldr files , but how the restoring of this files is done...? I've never done this, so I need a bit of tutoring here, if possible! /images/forums/icons/blush.gif

[Andy-S]

Once you have installed Windows 98 on the C: copy the bootsect.dos, ntloader etc. files to the root of C: and that should be you.

Cheers
Andy

[simpatico]

Here is the way I intend to "Copy" I'll open the root folder, then open the floppy and drag and drop those files in the root folder, will windows ask if I want to replace the files when I drop them because they'll exist already (I'm nor certain of the other 3, but the boot ini for sure) or do I rename the boot ini ,before I copy it , and is there a better way, other then Drag and Drop? OR Copy and Paste ! I intend to clean install w98se tonight ,and I want to be absolutely sure that I understand this coping process correctly! Thanks andy-s /images/forums/icons/smile.gif

[Andy-S]

Just drag and drop them from within Windows 98. None of these files should be on the root directory if you have done a clean install.

Cheers
Andy

[simpatico]

Great! thanks Andy-S, I'll post the outcome....

[simpatico]

Hi Andy-S. I hope you have had a nice Christmas, my was ok, and I like to report what's happening, since I've clean installed w98, and everything works properly, but there is a big problem with the project that we've been talking about,so here is the history of what's been happening:......After the flawless w98 installation and the final reboot I tried to open the floppy disk where the 4 file that where saved to, boot ini,bootsect.dos, etc.. but to my total surprise the 4 files where not there at all at first, so I thought that maybe the floppy was corrupted or something! I had a backup floppy and that too "seen" to be empty, so since I have a Hp backup rig with win-me, I fired it up, and tried both floppy on the Hp, and there they were all 4 files, clear and crisp just as I've copied them, so I went back to w98 rig, and adjusted the view setting to the show all files, and tried the floppy again! and this time it opened ok, but two of the files, specifically the ntldr, and bootsect.dos seen that they are not read by w98, there is the open with icon, you know the page looking icon, with the corner folded, and a Little square in the center with 3 color dots in it!(I don't know what is called) so I went ahead anyway and dropped all 4 of'em in the root folder, and rebooted, but nothing happened, zero, zilch, nada, so I thought that w98 just can't read those nt files and win- me can and just to experiment I installed win-me on top of w98 and retried the same thing but again the floppy shows as empty ( I also like to mention that I tried the floppy on my sony vaio w98se laptop, it open it ok but the something the two files where not readable as well ) So now I'll uninstall win-me and I'll be back to the original w98se and hope that there is a way to make this work! I would love to learn this step, ps: I've tested the floppy drive with a dozen of floppy disks some are files of w2k other wxp with programs and a mix of stuff and all of them worked\opened just as they should without any problems, I even wrote\copied\formatted and rewrote some stuff, to test the functionality of the floppy drive, and it appear to be working fine.. How can we fix this so that it works ! Thanks Andy-s /images/forums/icons/smile.gif I like to add that I've missed the point of not installing the 4 files onto the root directory, but that is where the files where in the first place, unless I use the term "root directory" wrongly what I've been calling the root directory is faund by right click on the icon of the c: drive? no!...

<P ID="edit"><FONT class="small">Edited by simpatico on 12/25/02 23:44.</FONT></P>

[Andy-S]

Sorry I missed an important step. You have to repair the boot sector before copying the files over.

To restore the boot sector:
Start Windows 2000 by using the Windows 2000 CD-ROM or Setup boot disks.
When Windows 2000 Setup starts, press ENTER to start, and then press the R key to repair the existing installation.
Press R again to initiate the emergency repair process to fix the existing installation of Windows 2000.
Press F to initiate the process that automatically repairs the computer.
If you have an ERD, insert the disk when you are prompted, and then when Setup completes repairing your boot sector, restart your computer to finish the process.

If you do not have an ERD, press L. Windows starts to search for the installation and displays any installation that it finds. If the emergency repair process cannot locate the Windows 2000 installation, reinstall Windows 2000.


I'm not sure that I understand when you say I've missed the point of not installing the 4 files onto the root directory, but that is where the files where in the first place, unless I use the term "root directory" wrongly what I've been calling the root directory is faund by right click on the icon of the c: drive? no!...

Even if the files were on the root directory previously they won't be there after you install W98. You need to copy the 4 files from the floppy drive to C:?


Cheers
Andy

[simpatico]

Hi Andy-S the problem is fixed, and as far as your question, I just got confused with the word "should" Rather then "would" that you use in the sentence: "none of these file should be in the root directory" but now I'm clear about the root directory issue, Yeah ! That is indeed a important step, maybe THE most important step, and that's how the problem was solved , thanks to you Andy-S, now I've learned a great deal on how to repair a boot sector, but I still have a wondering thought; If we didn't drop those 4 files in the R\D would the repair using the w2k disk have written those 4 boot sector files automatically! a billion thanks Andy-S /images/forums/icons/smile.gif

[Andy-S]

No problem. Glad you got it resolved. On the other question regarding the 4 files. The repair would probably have re-created them okay but it's always good to have a backup copy.

Cheers
Andy