Windows 98 Boot Issues... Help!

I have pc running win 98se that will only boot into a dos mode, however if I boot into safe mode I am able to get into window. Why can't I boot into windows right away? Helpl

 

Are you saying that Windows will not boot unless you boot in safe mode? With Windows95/98/ME, this can be caused by several factors:

* Incorrect system settings
* VXD mismatch (driver issues)
* Corrupted Registry
* Corrupted Filesystem and/or bad HDD
* Bad/Damaged hardware (other)

There are more which I'm not remembering right now, but those are the big ones. Can you think of anything which might have changed prior to this problem? Added hardware, software, changed settings, etc?

 

I can't really thing of anything else, daughter's friend was on the computer and the next day when tryhing to boot up all that came up was a dos window. I really don't have much information other than that her girlfriend may have changed something, but I do not know what she may have changed.

 

Has she dropped it, bumped it hard or spilled anything on it?

 

It wasn't dropped and nothing was spilled on it. Still can't figure it out.

 

Maybe DOS was installed on the primary partition ?

At this point, I think a complete reinstall is what you should do.

 

I believe that you are correct, however I really didn't want to do this and lose all information that is already on the pc. Thanks for the help

 

Unless you format, you won't normally lose any data on the drive.

 

Well, it's not a quick fix, but what you can do is take the drive out of the problem computer, hook it up to another, working PC, transfer over the files you want to save, put the said drive back in it's original box and then you can reformat and reinstall. Later on, burn to CD or, if there's a NIC on both systems, transfer data over a network. You'd just need a cross over cable for direct PC to PC NIC connections. If that's over your head, you can still hook the drive up to the other system and drag over all the files you saved.