Which update? Knowing this could have helped those trying to help you.

I tried reinstalling ME over itself, however the install errors out
at 35%.

How since you say you have no CD? Was this by running the setup file in
either c:\windows\options\install or c:\windows\options\cabs?
Reinstalling Win Me over itself is the VERY last thing you should try and
is guaranteed to cause problems unless one takes the necessary precautions
first such as uninstalling IE6 (if installed) and renaming a wmploc.dll to
wmploc.old (if WMP9 installed). If you have either IE6 or WMP9 installed
and not done this then reinstalling Win Me is most likely to trash the
system.

What exactly was the error that you saw at 35%? Again knowing this would
help those who might be able to help to give their best advice.

Boot floppy. Not having a Win Me boot floppy isn't important if all you
are doing is booting to DOS but you shouldn't use this floppy to SYS the
hard drive or perform any specific Win Me actions.

I don't even know what caused all
this aside from the security updates.

Installing Win Me patches from the Windows Update site shouldn't have
caused these problems. I suspect that something else was the cause,
perhaps running an AV application that blocked scripting whilst installing
the updates.
--
Mike Maltby



Dee Brennan wrote:

Because I'm an idiot, I ran a Windows update on my ME machine. After
the reboot, I got the above error.

I tried using a fix found on the Microsoft support site (it involved
editing in DOS the system.ini command line regarding the Explorer.exe
shell). This didn't work and now my computer either boots
immediately to a black screen in normal mode, or boots to an "It is
now safe to turn off your computer" in safe mode.

I tried reinstalling ME over itself, however the install errors out
at 35%. When I purchased the computer, a master CD was not included,
and it was not possibly to create an emergency boot disk. (I've been
using an onld Win 95 start up disk to access the command prompt
function at start up.)

If there's any suggestions anybody has for me at this point, it will
have to be command prompt based as I am completely unable to access
any functions outside of the prompt.

Barring that, is there any way for me to reinstall the operating
system if the soft reinstall is having issues copying files or
finding pathways for the files? I don't even know what caused all
this aside from the security updates.

Thanks for any help/suggestions any of you may have,

DB.