KRNL386.EXE error

I am running WIN98SE.

My computer has been running fine. Today when I came in to work I found that
it was trying to shut down but apparently stuck on the "Windows is shutting
down" screen. I think that someone on night shift tried to reboot the
computer.

I powered down the computer and rebooted it. This is where I recieved the
message:

"While initializing device shell:
Cannot find or load required file KRNL386.EXE

General failure reading drive C

Abort Retry Cancel"

I powered the computer down and rebooted it. It got stuck loading the
desktop. I could see my desktop but no icons or anything. Just the color of
the back ground.
I rebooted again and it loaded Windows just fine.

Any ideas as to why this happened and how do I stop it from happening again?

`pjhjones wrote:

"While initializing device shell:
Cannot find or load required file KRNL386.EXE

General failure reading drive C

Abort Retry Cancel"

Any ideas as to why this happened and how do I stop it from
happening again?

This is what happens when people keep running windows 98 on 10-year-old
hardware.

Your hard drive has developed bad sectors.

You need to start it in DOS mode (press f8 during bootup). Because of
the bad sectors, it may not boot DOS properly, in which case you'll need
to boot DOS from a floppy disk.

Once you're in DOS, you need to run scandisk.exe. You may need to also
run that from a floppy if you can't access it from the hard drive.

Beyond that, you might need to physically remove the drive and slave it
to another working computer and perform diagnostics and drive
maintainence on it that way.

Once all the bad sectors have been identified and mapped out of usage,
you will need to replace all system files that were occupying the bad
sectors. To do that, you will need access to another win-98 system that
will have good copies of those files.

An alternative course of action, when you have the drive slaved to
another machine, is to simply copy important files from it over to the
other machine. Once you've done that, obtain a new drive and install it
in the original system and re-install win-98 on it. Your existing hard
drive will only get worse and develop more bad sectors with time.

`pjhjones wrote:

"While initializing device shell:
Cannot find or load required file KRNL386.EXE

General failure reading drive C

Abort Retry Cancel"

Any ideas as to why this happened and how do I stop it from
happening again?

This is what happens when people keep running windows 98 on 10-year-old
hardware.

Your hard drive has developed bad sectors.

You need to start it in DOS mode (press f8 during bootup). Because of
the bad sectors, it may not boot DOS properly, in which case you'll need
to boot DOS from a floppy disk.

Once you're in DOS, you need to run scandisk.exe. You may need to also
run that from a floppy if you can't access it from the hard drive.

Beyond that, you might need to physically remove the drive and slave it
to another working computer and perform diagnostics and drive
maintainence on it that way.

Once all the bad sectors have been identified and mapped out of usage,
you will need to replace all system files that were occupying the bad
sectors. To do that, you will need access to another win-98 system that
will have good copies of those files.

An alternative course of action, when you have the drive slaved to
another machine, is to simply copy important files from it over to the
other machine. Once you've done that, obtain a new drive and install it
in the original system and re-install win-98 on it. Your existing hard
drive will only get worse and develop more bad sectors with time.

98 Guy wrote:

`pjhjones wrote:

General failure reading drive C

This is what happens when people keep running windows 98 on 10-year-old
hardware.

Your hard drive has developed bad sectors.

Something else to consider-

If there is anything important on that drive, I suggest you follow the
advice I gave in my previous post and copy that stuff off it. The most
"ergonomic" way to do that is, as I've said, to slave the drive to
another computer.

The drive may be in such a state now that it is very "delicate" and you
may not have that much operational time left before it becomes totally
unusable. Every minute of operational time it has may be precious so
use it wisely.

98 Guy wrote:

`pjhjones wrote:

General failure reading drive C

This is what happens when people keep running windows 98 on 10-year-old
hardware.

Your hard drive has developed bad sectors.

Something else to consider-

If there is anything important on that drive, I suggest you follow the
advice I gave in my previous post and copy that stuff off it. The most
"ergonomic" way to do that is, as I've said, to slave the drive to
another computer.

The drive may be in such a state now that it is very "delicate" and you
may not have that much operational time left before it becomes totally
unusable. Every minute of operational time it has may be precious so
use it wisely.

This hard drive is actually only about 3 months old. There is actually
nothing important saved on the Hard Drive. All of our test data is saved on
our network. I have a spare that I built the other day and was able to plug
it in and they are back up and running. I have been advised to trash the
first one and just build another spare.

What could have caused these problems so that I can prevent it from
happening to this new hard drive that I installed this morning?

"98 Guy" wrote:

98 Guy wrote:

`pjhjones wrote:

General failure reading drive C

This is what happens when people keep running windows 98 on 10-year-old
hardware.

Your hard drive has developed bad sectors.

Something else to consider-

If there is anything important on that drive, I suggest you follow the
advice I gave in my previous post and copy that stuff off it. The most
"ergonomic" way to do that is, as I've said, to slave the drive to
another computer.

The drive may be in such a state now that it is very "delicate" and you
may not have that much operational time left before it becomes totally
unusable. Every minute of operational time it has may be precious so
use it wisely.

This hard drive is actually only about 3 months old. There is actually
nothing important saved on the Hard Drive. All of our test data is saved on
our network. I have a spare that I built the other day and was able to plug
it in and they are back up and running. I have been advised to trash the
first one and just build another spare.

What could have caused these problems so that I can prevent it from
happening to this new hard drive that I installed this morning?

"98 Guy" wrote:

98 Guy wrote:

`pjhjones wrote:

General failure reading drive C

This is what happens when people keep running windows 98 on 10-year-old
hardware.

Your hard drive has developed bad sectors.

Something else to consider-

If there is anything important on that drive, I suggest you follow the
advice I gave in my previous post and copy that stuff off it. The most
"ergonomic" way to do that is, as I've said, to slave the drive to
another computer.

The drive may be in such a state now that it is very "delicate" and you
may not have that much operational time left before it becomes totally
unusable. Every minute of operational time it has may be precious so
use it wisely.

pjhjones wrote:

This hard drive is actually only about 3 months old.

What could have caused these problems so that I can prevent it
from happening to this new hard drive that I installed this
morning?

When you say the drive is 3 months old - do you mean that windows 98 was
installed 3 months ago, or the drive was purchased 3 months ago as a new
(and not used) drive?

There is really nothing that can prevent a hard drive from developing
bad sectors, aside from supplying it with a proper (and clean) power
supply and keeping it within it's thermal limits (ie preventing it from
getting hotter than it should).

If you can look at the label on the top of the drive, tell us what the
exact make and model of the drive is, and the manufacturing date (there
should be a date printed on the label).

pjhjones wrote:

This hard drive is actually only about 3 months old.

What could have caused these problems so that I can prevent it
from happening to this new hard drive that I installed this
morning?

When you say the drive is 3 months old - do you mean that windows 98 was
installed 3 months ago, or the drive was purchased 3 months ago as a new
(and not used) drive?

There is really nothing that can prevent a hard drive from developing
bad sectors, aside from supplying it with a proper (and clean) power
supply and keeping it within it's thermal limits (ie preventing it from
getting hotter than it should).

If you can look at the label on the top of the drive, tell us what the
exact make and model of the drive is, and the manufacturing date (there
should be a date printed on the label).

Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 160GB
P/N ST3160215A
Date Code: 09016 (not sure what that means)

This hard drive was purchased brand new in either October of 08, or Dec of
08. (I bought three in October and then one more in Dec.)

I loaded Windows and put in the computer in Jan of 09. It has been running
just fine until this morning.

Temperature inside the cabinet is a little warm but not nearly warm enough
to be concerned. The cabinet also has a fan to circulate warm air out of the
cabinet.




"98 Guy" wrote:

pjhjones wrote:

This hard drive is actually only about 3 months old.

What could have caused these problems so that I can prevent it
from happening to this new hard drive that I installed this
morning?

When you say the drive is 3 months old - do you mean that windows 98 was
installed 3 months ago, or the drive was purchased 3 months ago as a new
(and not used) drive?

There is really nothing that can prevent a hard drive from developing
bad sectors, aside from supplying it with a proper (and clean) power
supply and keeping it within it's thermal limits (ie preventing it from
getting hotter than it should).

If you can look at the label on the top of the drive, tell us what the
exact make and model of the drive is, and the manufacturing date (there
should be a date printed on the label).