Doug Beman Posted March 20, 2003 Share Posted March 20, 2003 That's right. My home PC is completely NFG, refusing to boot at all (in normal mode it reaches the desktop and then reboots; in safe mode I get a HIMEM.sys error that ends the boot process). I took it to a local shop and they said they couldn't locate the trouble, but they also said they were able to get it to run WinXP (I currently have 98 on it) and I don't know how they did that (there's no record of the hard drive being re-partitioned and XP being installed there, or being installed overtop 98 and then removed) so I'm not 100% they're right. I live in central NJ (for those in the know, I'm on Route 28 west of 287). If you think you can fix it, and are able to visit me, I will pay you some fixed price (small amount of cash, beer, etc) to take a look at this thing. If interested and able, please email me. DjB 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schrullenhaft Posted March 20, 2003 Share Posted March 20, 2003 Sorry I'm not in NJ to lend a hand. It's possible that the shop put in their own hard drive temporarily and installed XP on it. This would allow them to check a fresh install and see if it had problems or not. Assuming that the testing was sufficient enough to cause problems one way or another, then it would allow them to determine if it is a software or hardware problem. Have you tried a completely clean install of Win98 (repartition/reformat) ? Are there devices that are hooked up to your computer now that weren't at the shop ? If there are, then you may want to disconnect them temporarily. If the shop was correct and it is a software problem, then you may have to take the plunge and reformat your hard drive or purchase/borrow another hard drive and perform a clean install of Win98 on that. If the shop was incorrect (didn't know what they were doing; didn't test long enough, etc.) and your problem is hardware related, then it could be several things. The HIMEM.SYS error could be indicative of either a memory problem, a CPU cache problem (which means a bad CPU - pretty rare) or a motherboard problem (memory controller chip or motherboard cache, depending on the CPU you have). There's even a possibility of a power supply problem (which could be the power supply itself, the motherboard or the amount of devices you have plugged into your motherboard - internal and possibly even external). Your problem could even be heat related (though usually this takes awhile to become evident - unless your CPU is overheating, then it can be fairly immediate). You may want to double-check that all fans are running. You may want to check them with a flashlight, because they could be moving, but not generating enough 'air flow' to actually do their job (which means that they need to be either cleaned or more likely replaced). 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brooktrout Posted March 21, 2003 Share Posted March 21, 2003 Just a thought but did the techs or you try safe mode? If not hit the F8 key (repeatedly) before Windows loads and select the Safe Mode option. You might try selecting the command prompt only option and renaming the autoexec.bat and config.sys to .bak files before rebooting and selecting the safe mode option. There is also a step-by-step with confirmation option that lets you Y/N during each process during the bootup. If it will not load with safe mode then the easiest thing is to borrow/buy another drive as others suggested and install a fresh OS to back up your files when both disks are mounted. Depending on how much data you have to backup, if it is only a few hundred meg you could use a parallel zip drive (if available) and back your data up when booted to DOS mode. This would require the pkzip.exe dos version along with the guest.exe (downloadable from iomega's site) program that let's you mount a zip drive in dos mode. You could use pkzip to compress all of the data and then span the large zip file across mutliple 100 MB zip disks. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doug Beman Posted March 21, 2003 Author Share Posted March 21, 2003 Originally posted by brooktrout: Just a thought but did the techs or you try safe mode? If not hit the F8 key (repeatedly) before Windows loads and select the Safe Mode option. You might try selecting the command prompt only option and renaming the autoexec.bat and config.sys to .bak files before rebooting and selecting the safe mode option. There is also a step-by-step with confirmation option that lets you Y/N during each process during the bootup. If it will not load with safe mode then the easiest thing is to borrow/buy another drive as others suggested and install a fresh OS to back up your files when both disks are mounted. Depending on how much data you have to backup, if it is only a few hundred meg you could use a parallel zip drive (if available) and back your data up when booted to DOS mode. This would require the pkzip.exe dos version along with the guest.exe (downloadable from iomega's site) program that let's you mount a zip drive in dos mode. You could use pkzip to compress all of the data and then span the large zip file across mutliple 100 MB zip disks. Tried the Safe Mode variations, all of which led, eventually, to the HIMEM.sys error and boot-stop. I do have a hard drive from my old system, but it's running 98 (I'd intended to transfer all its data to the new system and then clean it and use it solely for productivity things like Quicken, websurfing, printer driving, etc. and leave the new system for games. If I want to install this drive on the new system to get it running, do I plug it into an IDE connector and use the mobo BIOS to tell the system to boot from the interloper drive? Then transfer data to the interloper drive, wipe the permanent drive (I have a system-tools floppy disk) and boot XP from CD to reinstall? DjB 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brooktrout Posted March 21, 2003 Share Posted March 21, 2003 Originally posted by Doug Beman: If I want to install this drive on the new system to get it running, do I plug it into an IDE connector and use the mobo BIOS to tell the system to boot from the interloper drive? Then transfer data to the interloper drive, wipe the permanent drive (I have a system-tools floppy disk) and boot XP from CD to reinstall? DjB Not sure which drive is which here, but if you have an older system that is currently up and running then I would unplug the drive from the newer system and hook it up to the older system. Backup all the files from the newer disk to the older disk. Then put the disk back into the newer setup and boot from XP CD and install fresh copy. Once setup is finished I would hook up both machines thru network connection and move your data files to the new system. Of course this assumes you have a network adaptor in each and a crossover cable or hub/switch. If you do go this route, the drive from your new system would be jumpered as Master so you would want to hook it up as the master on the secondary IDE channel of the old system since it has a boot/master drive on the primary IDE channel. If your older system has a CDROM as master on the secondary channel then you would need to unplug the CDROM or jumper the newer system disk as the Slave for that channel, etc. If space is tight on the older drive then Zip the files when backing them up. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brooktrout Posted March 21, 2003 Share Posted March 21, 2003 Ok, I just re-read your last statement which It know looks as if you were thinking of booting off of the older system disk (which has a running copy of Win98 from another machine) in your newer system. If so, I would not do this because Windows would now see a new motherboard/chipset/video etc and would try to load all of those drivers over your existing Win98 setup. Just plug the newer system disk onto an empty IDE port of the older system (keeping in mind the Master/Slave jumpers on the channel you plug it into) and back your data up once windows boots up. This is assuming you have enough free space on this older drive to back up your data before wiping it clean with a new OS install. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doug Beman Posted March 21, 2003 Author Share Posted March 21, 2003 Originally posted by brooktrout: Ok, I just re-read your last statement which It know looks as if you were thinking of booting off of the older system disk (which has a running copy of Win98 from another machine) in your newer system. If so, I would not do this because Windows would now see a new motherboard/chipset/video etc and would try to load all of those drivers over your existing Win98 setup. Just plug the newer system disk onto an empty IDE port of the older system (keeping in mind the Master/Slave jumpers on the channel you plug it into) and back your data up once windows boots up. This is assuming you have enough free space on this older drive to back up your data before wiping it clean with a new OS install. Ah, I see what you're getting at. I do not have much data I want saved from the new computer. When it began acting up I stopped installing new stuff just in case. DjB 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.