Thanks Brian,
And to help keep it clear I'll interleave my response as well.
"Brian A." gonefish'n@afarawaylake wrote in message
...
"E_Net_Rider" wrote in message
...
At least to me, your post mind boggling. Answers inline on what I can
make any
sense of.
I would like to have some idea of what hit me.
A few mornings back, I find the computer with the vmm32.vxd missing
message.
Error Message: Cannot Find a Device File That May Be Needed to Run Windows
http://support.microsoft.com/default...;en-us;Q132008
Err Msg: Cannot Find a Device File That May Be Needed to Run...
http://support.microsoft.com/default...;en-us;Q166832
Neither apply as I could get that far. The error message was something like,
Windows needs vmm32.vxd to start. Since this is a made up file upon install,
if it is in the cabs, it is a basic one. Now that I think about it, it might
have allowed me to start at least, but I have to wonder if my problem wasn't
much more complex.
Now that I think about it, something must have forced it to reboot as
well.
To complicate matters, this was an upgraded machine, and the upgrade
disk
going to SE is the one that only works on 98. That is the machine has to
be
up and running to install it. And the machine has no floppy and I never
got
around to making a bootable CD. I manage to get into DOS and get into
the
windows directory. There are only three folders and most of the files
are
missing.
You can create a 98 boot disk from any other 98 machine or get one at:
http://www.bootdisk.com/
Please read Read1st in the right pane for instructions on how to create
the boot
disk from the downloaded file.
I went there, expecting to find a ready to burn to cd image for booting to
cd. I'll try again, maybe I missed that first paragraph. Then again I may
have been tired and frustrated.
Are the other partitions of the 80 GB HDD accessible in DOS? Maybe it
was
me?
If they are there, yes. At the prompt type:
d: and press Enter
dir d:\ and press Enter
When I tried "cd e:\" it gave me invalid directory? d: is normally my swap
file.
If the drive has many folders/files and scrolls by to quickly, then use a
/p
switch and/or the /w switch. The /p switch will allow you to see a page at
a
time. The /w switch makes the list wide.
dir d:\ /p
If at any time you want to abort the switch/es and and get back to the
prompt,
press ctrl+c.
The /p is a necessity and thankful it exists. ctrl+c I haven't used as I
recall. The way you wrote it, it sounds like some switches can be sticky?
And now the question of the updated files for the larger HDD come to
mind as
well. Because I decided to proceed with installing Gold and as soon as
completed run the SE upgrade CD. But the scandisk reported numerous
errors
on C. Other partitions OK. It reported a folder named BAER which aroused
my
curiosity as I have never had any program, etc. associated with that
name on
my machine, to the best of my knowledge of course.
Was it a fresh install or overinstall?
Is there more than one HD installed? If so, have there always been?
Have you run a drive integrity check with the manufacturers utlity to make
sure
the disk is not failing?
Just one HDD, unless you count my attempts at getting a USB to work as
advertised.
The main drive was upgraded and then the OS was reinstalled a few times to
correct problems. And again, because it is the 98 to SE disk, it will not
run unless you are in normal mode. The BIOS of this MOBO is a little strange
to me and I haven't yet got a grasp on some of the settings, which I don't
know if that has anything to do with what I am about to write. It is a WD
drive. I have their tools CD, ver 11 I think. When I would try to boot to
it, it would start to do the loading showing it loaded CD driver, DrDos,
etc. and when it would get to the point it might have thrown up the
utilities on screen, it would freeze. Several attempts gave the same result.
BIOS has a setting to protect against flashing it, but it seems to me some
machines have a setting to protect the MBR, which I don't have.
Putting my hands into the box, and bumping power cables, I did notice and
itermittant loss of power to the HDD, which I hadn't noticed at all before.
I can hear it spin and the lights never indicated a fail. Yet on the
cautious side, I inspected a couple of connectors and noticed that the
copper, maybe, certainly not gold, were starting to discolor, darken,
indicating a normal surface oxidation. There is a grease available at
automotive centers intended for light bulb sockets. The old stuff often used
was lubriplate, but you need to be carefull as to brand as some are slightly
conductive. This new stuff looks similar to pure silicone grease, a whitish
translucent color. I lightly coated all pins on the power connectors and put
back together, for obvious preventative reasons. Still was in the usuall
predicament, but I think it was this time that it finally loaded that WD
utilities. Only obvious thing would be that the power was totally off for
maybe an hour.
And BTW, the utilities on that CD said everything was OK. Even replaced the
MBR with a backed up copy created when the HDD was installed, and that
didn't help either. And also it wouldn't try to boot to the W98 install disk
either, earlier. Nor the ME disk I have. But because the WD utility would
try to load it's version of DOS, the drive was obviously working. Makes me
suspicious of something?
Any help is greatly appreciated because I really want to avoid this mess
again. Current result is that everything will have to be reinstalled.
Machine is currently running and everything remains on the other
partitions,
so most of my data is obviously OK. But on the C drive I have a ton of
DIR
folders and almost 300 filexxxx.chk files. Registry was obviously lost,
hence the total reinstall. And after much sifting, I will likely find
most
of the other data in those DIR's.
Sounds like an fdisk/format/reinstall time. Definitely check the drive
integrity, that's a lot of scandisks .chk files.
Added thought. Beginning to think the drive was dieing, I put a brand new
drive I had laying around into the machine, and initially it would do
nothing either, as to looking at the CD's. When it got back to working that
far, I switched the connectors back to the original drive, hoping to
salvage, actually hoping it would boot. That is when I found the mess of the
files with missing directories and supposedly bad files. Also why I got the
afterthought of possibly the upgraded scandisk, format, or is it fdisk &
scan reg might have been involved. That is, do the old versions on the
install CD's have a problem with...................
Oops. Now that I think about it, maybe this was the culprit. 80GB HDD.
Largest partition was like 34 GB. Would this have been a compatibility
problem? That is the old version of scandisk on the CD?
Norman
After too many failed tape recovery systems, I had decided to dabble
with
external USB HDD. Thoughts on this are welcome as well and BTW this
isn't
going to well either. Can't break 15MB/s on USB2. And it came with
GHOST,
which I have yet installed. I had picked up a copy of Partition Magic 8
at
the same time. At least one of these I tried to install and it failed,
crashed. I thought I uninstalled, but later found folders/files,
associated
with some security company that Norton may use as part of antipiracy. I
got
rid of what I was aware in that area, but now wonder if there was some
remnant left that timed out at the 30 day not registered and could have
went
haywire. What search I've done indicates dibeng.dll or was it dib32.dll
need
replacing, causation for the vmm32.vxd error, but the files exist in the
created DIR's, possibly indicating as well that everything just got
scrambled.
Definitely need to Get Around to It, and make that bullet proof back up
that
will act as a recovery.
--
Brian A. Sesko { MS MVP_Shell/User }
Conflicts start where information lacks.
http://basconotw.mvps.org/
Suggested posting do's/don'ts: http://www.dts-l.org/goodpost.htm
How to ask a question: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555375