[help] i totally screwed up win98se

[shockme17]

so.. irst off, thanks for your help in my other topics, but i have a bigger dilemma.. i installed and uninstalled a few of those unofficial packs.. i had the latest 2.1a pack installed successfully. then i tried the revolutions packs, which made my system run at 100%.. so i did a restore. then tried the 98se2me pack, using winME cabs.. i had the same results, so i did another restore.. but when i rebooted it looked like the same modded shell was being loaded. so for some reason, i thought if i uninstalled the 2.1a pack and reinstalled, that would kind of make everything clean and back to normal..

that wasn't the case..

so i reboot, and windows starts loading ok.. then the gui comes up, and i get a bunch of unknown fatal errors with explorer.exe.. and can't get beyond that.. if i boot into safe mode, the same thing happens..

so the big question is.. what do i do now?

i'm thinking if i can find out where the 98secab files are stored, i can extract explorer and replace the screwed up one.. but i can't seem to locate where those files are.

is there a default directory to where windows keeps system backups?

is there still a setup.exe to reinstall windows from the hardrive within dos?

is this at all fixable without a cdrom drive!?

many many thanks in advance.

[LLXX]

Did you originally install 98se from the hard drive? The cabs can be found where you originally installed from.

Yes, there is a setup.exe in the same dir as the cabs.

It's fixable without a cdrom if your cab files are on the hard drive.

explorer.exe is in win98_45.cab.

[Crash&Burn]

My roomate had an explorer.exe fatal on Win2K, replacing explorer didn't help at all. Was unable to find the root cause after trying a lot of different things from the repair console (the only thing that could access the system at all).

Wound up reinstalling and hasn't happened since.

Honestly try a fresh install, gape's unnoficial SP and 98se2me - they work really well.

[Pantner]

you may not need to do a fresh install...

i've found with many 98SE/ME problems, you can just do an install over the top, and it'll fix it up...

sorta like the WinXP repair...

however, it doesn't always work...its a thought...

[shockme17]

edit: ok so i found the cab files in windows\options\cabs .. but there is no setup.exe here. what can i do now?

thanks again.

Edited December 8, 2005 by shockme17

[LLXX]

Is it an OEM version? That's the only version I know of that doesn't have a normal setup.exe...

You can try renaming the dossetup.bin to dossetup.exe and running that, *if* dossetup.bin exists at all.

[shockme17]

unfortunately i dont have that file.. someone was kind enough to send me a list of all the files i should have in my options\cabs folder, and the only files i seem to be missing are :

dossetup.bin

format.com

oemsetup.bin

oemsetup.exe

setup.exe

w98setup.bin

i've managed to sort of get windows started, by changing the shell string in the system.ini from explorer.exe to progman.exe.. but i can only run a few of the win 3.11 -like programs..

[shockme17]

ok, ive managed to copy those files over, but when i run the setup, it says "your computer lready has an operations system installed, which cannot be upgraded by this version of Setup. You need to obtain the Windows 98 Upgrade"

and when i run oemsetup, it asks me to put in the windows 98 bootdisk, which i did (downloaded from bootdisk.com) and that just brought be to an a:\ prompt..

edit : i've managed to move a few files around, and nearly everything seems to be working- but i have the wrong comdlg32.dll file.. the version i have is something like 5.5, and i need 4.7. because i keep getting the error comdlg cannot link to shell32.dll: 712, or something to that effect.

so if someone could post a 4.7 version of comdlg32.dll, that would be greatly appreciated.

thank you

Edited December 29, 2005 by shockme17