Not Loading After Re-Boot

[AttaGirl42]

Hello Everyone! I need help regarding my room-mate's computer. She runs Window's 98 Second Edition and has a 2 year old HP with 128RAM. I'm sorry I don't know alot more of her specifics. Last night, she pressed the start button and then the shut down button and it went through the proper steps and shut down normally. Today, she turned it on, and it sounded normal, and the screen went through the normal Window's 98 picture and etc and it comes to the window's name and password prompt on her desktop and her name is always entered but the password is always blank and she just clicks on cancel and it always loads her desktop icons and the bottom tool bar with the clock and start button and etc. This morning, she clicked on the cancel button on the password and name prompt as usual and after it went away, there is a brief glimpse of the bottom tool bar or whatever it's called, lol, and then it vanishes. None of the desktop icons appear and you can't right click and if you click on Ctrl-Alt-Del to see whats there, it only shows her Avg anti virus agent, and two other things. She wasn't sure what they were, but thought they were ms32 and mgloop or something close to that effect. She loaded in safe mode after that and got the same desktop picture but nothing else.

My question is, what can I do to get her back in business? Her computer is completely up to date on all the critical updates and etc and has never had any problems. Last night she said it was fine. Any advice or information would be greatly appreciated!

She is in computer withdrawl right now! LOL

Thanks!

[kjanx]

boot to the c: prompt

type in
c:\scanreg/restore [note the forward slash]

in the resulting menu, choose the earliest date shown.

restart after the restore.

and if any one says you need a space in that command i gave you , don't pay any attention to it.

these folks on this forum try to correct me everytime.

the command will work either way

[AttaGirl42]

kjanx,

Thanks for your quick reply! I did what you suggested but got the exact same results. After I chose the earliest date listed in the listings, and it did whatever it was doing, it told me I had restored a good registry and I needed to restart the computer and I did that. Then the computer went through the normal re-boot process and the windows screen went through it's process and I got the name and password prompt as usualy and then I saw the bottom start bar with the clock blink on for a short second and then only the desktop wallpaper was showing and nothing else again. Same as before. I did do a Ctrl-Alt-Del and found exactly what was there. There is Avg (which is her anti virus program) Msgloop, and Msg32. Those are the only three listings.

Would you have any other ideas about what to do now? I'm at a loss here.

Anyways, thanks for your reply earlier, I do appreciate it!

[kjanx]

the fact that explorer doesn't show up in the control alt delete tells me its corrupt.

you can reinstall windows 98se on top of itself by booting from the cd-rom installl disk. however, i see thats an hp so the recovery disk may give you the option to reload system files without completely formatting the drive, thereby losing data

[AttaGirl42]

Hello kjanx!

Thank you again for your reply! My room-mate just brought me a 2 CD pack that came with her HP computer. LOL One is a complete system restore and one CD is just a applications restore. I'm going to try the applications restore first and see what options it gives me first and if worse comes to worse, I'll just have to do a system restore. As you said, explorer should be in the Ctrl-Alt-Del as well as other things. From C prompt I ran a scan disk and there were no bad sectors and I ran her floppy boot disk. So I believe a gremlin got in her puter overnight and had a party...LOL.

Thanks again for your time and your help and advice! I appreciate it greatly!

[AttaGirl42]

kjanx,

I hope you are still out there and not tired of my questions. I went in and put in the CD with the Applications Restore and the instructions were to insert it and then turn off the system for 30 seconds then power back on and follow prompts from the restore disk. Well, when I turned the computer back on, it went through the normal start up it's been doing tonight and it never brought up the applications disk window on the screen. Without seeing my start button or My Computer to manually start the CD, I don't know how to get it to run. I'm not really familiar on how to get it to run from the C prompt. The CD-Rom is working I know. Is there anything that should be changed in the BIOS? I've not changed anything there. Just wondering.

Anyway, just wanted to let you know what was going on here. Sorry to be such a pain in the behind tonight. Actually my room-mate is being a pain in my behind with her puter. LOL

Thanks again!

[Mowergun]

Hi,

I don't know if this will help, and maybe you have already tried it, but have you opened the case and checked to see that all of the connections are seated firmly? I saw my neighbor's machine do some weird things after she changed a fan, and it turned out that the connection to her cd-rom drive was loose.

Just a thought,

Mowergun

[AttaGirl42]

Hi ya Mowergun!

Thanks for your reply! No, I didn't do that and hadn't even thought of it actually, but I got everything all back to running order now. I used her restore disc from HP that came with her Puter and ran the partial restore. It kept her files and only re-installed windows and etc. It seems to be fine now. It should since I managed to waste an entire afternoon and night on the crazy thing! LOL But, it's all good! Hey, thanks for the reply however, I do appreciate it and I'll keep it in mind however for the future!

Take care and have a great morning!

[Eeyore]

What I have not seen suggested is booting to Safe Mode. Press F8 when "Starting Windows 98" appears (see Windows 95 Troubleshooting) and select Safe Mode. If this works, it is most likely a problem with the AVG. We can work from there so you won't lose everything already installed.

As for the Restore CD, you may have to enter the BIOS Setup and make sure the "Boot Sequence" is set to "CDROM" first. That may be why the Restore program is not starting.

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[AttaGirl42]

Hey Eeyore!

Thanks for your reply! Yes, I did go in and start in safe mode and all I got on the screen after doing this were the words safe mode in all four corners and my wallpaper in the safe mode distorted look. I appreciate your suggestion, however!

Everything now seems to be working great again on her computer. I do have one question maybe you can help me on. She likes to have her HOTMAIL account come through her OUTLOOK EXPRESS account since she too uses AOL. (I know....AOL sucks...LOL) She had it configured this way before, to receive her Hotmail mail through her Outlook Express. I have mine configured this way, but it seems when I did mine, there was a listing under tools and accounts for Hotmail. Under her's, there is bigfoot and etc but no hotmail. Is there any way you or someone else can remind me how to configure Hotmail to do what we want? It would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks for all the suggestions to the original problem! I can always count on the people here for great and accurate answers!

Have a great Monday!!!!