I had recently been forced to reinstall the newest version of my ISPs
dailer...People PC. It was up and running OK. The next day I was trying to
limit my exposure to unfriendly things that come with it with Spybot. I
powered down and could never get it to boot back up (see below). Another
clue may be that when I try a reguiar boot there is an error message that
comes up over the login box that says Validation Failed For
C:\windows\system\vsinit.dll Does this help diagnosis?
As you suggested, I tried the scanReg /restore and it ran, but the *.cab
files had dates a few years old. I know I have installed things like tax
software etc since those dates, so I did not try to use them. Within
scanReg, I did save a new .cab ...bit for now I'm still stuck and could use
some advice. Would the .cab of a few years ago would be OK? What about
upgrading to XP? I have the original OEM Me disk and an XP ungrade disk.
Also, when looking for the Me Startup floppy that I made when I first
installed it, I came across another Dell CD that looked like it had some
utilities on it....is anything there useful? And, while running the scanReg,
options 2 & 3 were to boot with a CD or boot without one. Would these
options look for good copies of the corrupted stuff? Thanks for you help so
far

"Mart" wrote:

You don't say what you might have done to cause this - e.g. did it suddenly
'just happen' or were you doing some work to your computer immediately prior
to the problem occurring? You *might* just be in with a chance of restoring,
especially as you can't (completely) boot into either Normal or Safe modes.
Do NOT try to over-install (re-install over itself) - this will very likely
cause you far more problems than you already have.

Boot using the Windows Startup (floppy) Disk and choose 4) Minimal Boot.
At the A:\ prompt, type "scanreg /restore" (no quotes and note the space
between the g and /) then press Enter.
Follow the screen prompts and when asked, select the last 'good' date prior
to your problems, continuing with the instructions.

Don't forget to remove the floppy disk BEFORE you tell the machine to
reboot.

If that doesn't fix it then you may well have lost or damaged/corrupted
critical files and be left with no other option but to completely "Clean
Install". NB There are several possible solutions to recovering important
(personal?) data or files BEFORE you attempt a fresh installation - assuming
you have access to a second computer.

Mart


"JNB" wrote in message
...
My computer running Me will not finish booting up. It paints the box
asking
for username and password, which I setup for different users, but does not
display the different valid usernames. When I close that box by clicking
the
X, the music plays but it stops right there with a plain blue screen.
I've
also tried booting in Safe Mode and it I get a grey screen with Safe Mode
in
each corner. I assume that a file or 2 have become corrupted. How do I
recover? I have original Me CD, would reinstalling wipe out other
stuff.....would I need to reinstall everything? would I lose data? I've
also got an XP Upgrade disk. Is this original OS dependent, I think it
was
used for 98 SE. Is there another solution that would keep me from having
to
reinstall everything and not loose data files?