re-stall windows 98 with out losing all my programs??

I recently got the blue screen of death while running age of empires. Had a pretty bad crash. when rebooted i lost allmy shortcuts and drivers for most applications.
also got messages while booting that alot of things were wacked and that i should run scandisk and defrag and all that jazz. I did this, it said it fixed all kindsof KB's worth of errors. However i believe i am still missing alot of exe. programs and stuff for windows. For instance it will not let me shut-down and start-up in dos mode anymore, not that i know anything about dos. And lost the ability to get microsoft updates because it says windows installer no longer works, i can no longer access windows help or doctor watson.

I tried to re-install windows 98 off the disk hoping it would overlap with what files i have working correctly and fill in the blanks for the one's i am missing, and it goes to start and says that it cannot check my drives, and that i have to check them by running scan-disk in dos. But i cannot re-start in does because i am missing some sort of execute. can i do a full install on windows 98 without losing all the documents, artwork and programs i have in my system?

You may find answers at Ron Badour's site http://home.satx.rr.com/badour/html/w98_restore.html

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Windows98 links to solutions http://jake98.no-ip.info
Replies in the same thread please
Regards Jake

Judging by all the problems your are having, it looks to me like you need to
do a clean install, including removing all HD partitions, creating a new
partition, formatting your HD, and then installing W98 from your (I assume)
retail copy.

Back up anything important first, because a clean install wipes out
EVERYTHING, including a lot of accumulated problems.

"stevemac" wrote in message
...
I recently got the blue screen of death while running age of empires. Had
a pretty bad crash. when rebooted i lost allmy shortcuts and drivers for
most applications.
also got messages while booting that alot of things were wacked and that i
should run scandisk and defrag and all that jazz. I did this, it said it
fixed all kindsof KB's worth of errors. However i believe i am still
missing alot of exe. programs and stuff for windows. For instance it will
not let me shut-down and start-up in dos mode anymore, not that i know
anything about dos. And lost the ability to get microsoft updates because it
says windows installer no longer works, i can no longer access windows help
or doctor watson.

I tried to re-install windows 98 off the disk hoping it would overlap with
what files i have working correctly and fill in the blanks for the one's i
am missing, and it goes to start and says that it cannot check my drives,
and that i have to check them by running scan-disk in dos. But i cannot
re-start in does because i am missing some sort of execute. can i
do a full install on windows 98 without losing all the documents, artwork
and programs i have in my system?