Problems reinstalling WIN98 SE (W98)

[mikeaa101]

I am trying to reinstall win98se on a PC

spec intel celeron 400mhz
128mb ram
8gb hd

reinstall came about from getting explorer errors whenever I started windows basically explorer would terminate and not let me into windows.
On startup there would be a system.ini file missing and windows would advise me to unistall the software related to it however because this is a work machine I had no idea which application.
Any trying to upgrade to IE6 gave the explorer problem. Re partitioned and formatted the drive with fdisk ran setup widows begins to install all files copy machine restarts first error

"missing or damaged VMM32.vxd"

Now error is

"Windows is unable to combine vxd's into a monolithic file........."

I have been onto the knowledge base and tried the fixes but none work

I have also tried to re build vmm32.vxd as per tech notes

however now windows starts but just hangs on the win98 splash screen

Any Ideas

TIA

[mysterywolf]

that systen.ini error likely was due to an unistalled app which had left an entry under 386enh in system.ini, and made it try to load a vxd no longer there.
fdisk does not reformat. it creates the partition table. if you run fdisk and remove all partitions and then recreate them exactly as before there is a good chance that you can reboot the pc as though nothing has happened!...I've done myself but there's no guarantee!!
if setup fails with an error and hangs..do not soft reboot....but physically remove power. turn on and choose safe recovery. this forces setup to retry but misses out the part that failed before...do this as many times as required!

better though is to remove any adapters such as audio cards etc until install is done ok.

and if booting from floppy please make certain it is a fat32 created one !!

[mikeaa101]

Thanks for the info

I have since done a low level format on this drive and reinstalled windows with a fresh boot disk. This seems to have cured the .VXD orblems but has now thrown up a new problem

"Not Enough extended memory available to run windows"

This occurs on install as windows is preparing to start.

Have search the knowledge base and found 2 fixes but none work.
They involve altering either the config.sys or system.ini file.

Any ideas

TIA

[mysterywolf]

three things...
1.do you really mean low level format? I hope not. or do you simply mean format ?
2. that message about memory suggests to me that maybe your boot floppy was not created on a fat32 system and/or it contains startup files with entries designed for win95 or 3.1 even!
3. did you format the hard disk as bootable ie format /s ? you shouldn't have, and if you did and I am right about 2. above then this could be your problem.

my advice is...
go into bios and make the cd the first boot loading device. then boot from the cd. run setup that way and consider these if you want...

you can run format from the win98 folder on the cd.
create two partitions with fdisk and cipy the win98 folder to the second then run setup from there.
you might need to take your cd to another running 98 pc but on your cd in tools,mtsutil, fat32ebd you can run fat32ebd to create a bootdisk which will be correct and give you fdisk.

ps don't forget to alter boot order in bios at the appropriate time!!!

[mikeaa101]

Cheers Dude

I did exactly that seems as though it was the bootdisks that were the problem a format C: and then a boot from cd rom and setup windows straight from CD Rom works fine now

By the way when I say Low level Format I downloaded a utility from the Fujitsu web site which was a erase tool basically it erases all information data and partition information on the drive which using fdisk you then re partition the drive.

Anyway Cheers again

M