My path to liberation

Hello, ill make this quick as I can. This guy who runs his business out of his computer had a HDD crash. He was running Win 98 and decided to Upgrade. So he installed XP Upgrade. Long story short he started getting blue stop screens: 0x0000000A. So I came to the conclusion that it wasnt a hardware issue because I have an extra box I hack around with and installed his HDD and ran diagnostics checks with. So it was in a boot loop (Xp tried to load then Blue Stop Screen). Found out it was bad partition. When I would use XP boot cd it didnt give me an option to repair (files system [Unknown]) So I baught Hard Drive Mechanic. Now that the partition is fixed it no longer tries to enter XP, rather 98. It fixed the drive like a charm. Reboot. Now there is no more XP load screen then blue stop screen. Now its Win 98 load screen then to the following:

1. Normal
2. Logged (\BOOTLOG.TXT)
3. Safe mode
4. Step-by-step confirmation
5. Command prompt only
6. Safe mode command prompt only

Enter a choice: (Any choice prompts the following below)

Warning: Windows has detected a registry/configuration error.
Choose command prompt only and run SCANREG.

(SCANREG prompts error too)

The following is missing or corrupted: C:\WINDOWS\HIMEM.SYS

The following is missing or corrupted: C:\WINDOWS\DBLBUFF.SYS

The following is missing or corrupted: C:\WINDOWS\IFSHLP.SYS

The following is missing or corrupted: COMMAND.COM

Type the name of the COMMAND INTERPRETER (e.g., C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND.COM)

C>_


I dl a Win 98 boot disk from bootdisk.com and loaded it to a command prompt. It had two of the missing 4 files I needed.

Command.com
Himem.sys

So I copied those files:
Copy Himem.sys C:\windows
Copy command.com C:\windows

Then I reboot and low and behold only the other two missing files were prompt.

2 down 2 to go. Any suggestions where I can find these files:

DBLBUFF.SYS
IFSHLP.SYS

I have got an update. Found those files and copied them to my C:windows drive. I rebooted and then it flashed win 98 load screen and told me I was missing WIN.COM.

Win.com I know I have to extract that from a Win 98 CD which I dont have.
I think it will be WIN.CNF, extracted from a cabinet file?
What I have:
Knoppix
UBCD (ultimate boot CD)
Win 95 boot floppy
Win 98 boot floppy
Win XP boot CD

running out of options.

Find another machine running the same windows and copy the win.com from there
By the way how did so many files become deleted

Good question. Sometime after the XP Upgrade. I guess the file system remained FAT32.
You can set yourself up for disaster.

upgrades over the top are usually a recipe for disaster

Bad partition? Would this be the primary partition with Win98 and all his data on it? How did the partition go south? Virus? Defective drive? Anyway, I don't think you should be surprised to see lots of system files that are trashed. Even if the drive passes diagnostic tests now, you are likely to keep finding file after file missing or corrupted.

Just wipe it and start clean. If this guy didn't have the sense to back up critical data, you may need to pull the drive and run a data recovery program like GetDataBack on it, but I think you are going to find that trying to fix the Windows installation one file at a time is a losing battle. If he has the hardware to run it, I would certainly install XP. No doubt you can lay hands on a W98, ME, whatever CD when needed during the installation.

To edit or to post, that is the question. OK, been a bit brain damaged this week, so... yet another clarification is in order. Mostly I agree with Ferrit about upgrades, but I think the XP upgrade is the most painless (no, not totally painless) upgrade MS has released. Usually installs with a minimum of fuss, unless your old Windows installation is FUBAR. Now you say this guy had a hard drive crash, but you don't think it was hardware related? Huh?

Not all diagnostics are created equal, and without knowing what you ran, I don't have a high degree of confidence in the drive's integrity. Test it with the manufacturer's diagnostics (which should include a predictive failure analysis) and run them 2 or 3 times to help eliminate an intermittent electronic issue.

If the drive passes the tests, then you know that something software-related has happened to cause significant damage to the drive's file structure. This could be just a Windows file corruption problem, or a virus. If have not run a virus/spyware scan on the drive, you should before you reload Windows on it.

Essentially, consider the contents of this hard drive a write-off unless you (and the guy footing the bill) are prepared to invest lots of time in it. Sorry, but I think you are out of your depth on this job. You don't have the proper tools or expertise to do it adequately. Find someone to sub it to or just bow out.

I figured out the hard way that repairing one file at a time is a losing battle. It could have been a virus, I checked hardware and that passed. I ran a prog called Hard Drive Mechanic and it rebuilt a damaged sector on one of the heads. Then I ran scandisk from boot drive and it fixed a sector also. The stage im at now is to run xcopy and copy all files to a slave drive. My inexperience comes from a lack of imagination:)

Its always something, I cant believe the 98 Boot Disk does not contain xcopy?! man oh man. It doesnt like XP's xcopy ill tell you that. :)

Anybody know anything about Xcopy? And why it tells me ",Incorrect MS-DOS version."
I load Win 98 boot drive and then once at A: I put in the Win 95 boot disk because it has xcopy.

Do I need to edit my autoexec.bat file? I can use copy, but I need Xcopy's /s feature command. Im going to copy the entire drive as follows: A:>xcopy C: D:\*.*

Xcopy is not created equal either... and there is xcopy32 to confuse things. You must get the right version for the command.com you are running. Only you can sort that one out. Where is the 98 cd? why not just boot from that?

Oh man, I dont have a 98 CD just a boot floppy I dl from bootdisk.com.
So there is no other way to run Xcopy from the 98 boot disk?
Command.com heh, I would think that command.com would have been loaded into RAMDrive and I would pull code from that while im actively using xcopy.

err no.

Xcopy is still under copyright....