HP PAvilion and strange Win98 problem...

[jakkwb]

Greetings all-
I have here a HP Pavilion 6643 that is acting very strangely. When you turn the PC on, it starts loading Win98. It goes to the clouds screen, then gives the following dos screen message: "You are currently running in MS-DOS mode. Do you want to return to normal mode to run Windows applications again? (Enter = Yes, Esc = no)?

If I hit enter, the system promptly reboots, going back to the same place. If I press ESC, it goes to dos C: prompt.

This system will boot in safe mode.

Any suggestions?

Thanks, Al

[Wildman6971]

You have a line in your autoexec or config sys files that is forcing that boot up option.

Many DOS type games like Warcraft and the like will do this.

Let the machine boot to safe mode and edit your auto exec and config sys files to remove the problem line.

Hope this helps.

[jakkwb]

OK, so what (if anything) should be in these 2 files? There are several entries in each.

Thanks,

Al

[trinitro]

What are the lines? I need to know what the entries are.. a win98 machine should only have a path line.. but there may be exceptions. Look for any "run" lines, basically look for anything that does not point in the Win directory.

[Sly]

You would better off using "MSCONFIG"from your run command, go to the "STARTUP tab" and look and see if there is any thing that ask it to start in dos mode....

You can make a selective startup from there.. <IMG SRC="smilies/rolleyes.gif" border="0">

[Windowscrash]

I had this same problem, HP always reboots before going into DOS mode...

Look for suspect lines in autoexec.bat,config.sys and so on

I never found a solution because I just restored it to working state using Norton Ghost