Oolite Bulletins

OK, this is the situation - if I can't get this laptop up and running again, then my better half will want to use the main PC for her course work which means I get less BB/Oolite time and that's not good...

It's an old IBM Thinkpad 600 (PII-300MHz, 192MB RAM) dual boot Ubuntu (7.04) and W98SE.

All was well until I installed a PCMCIA USB2.0 card (it was ok after this) and then an Edimax Wireless USB network dongle - it seemed to install OK, it configured OK and even found my wireless network OK but when I tried to connect to the internet the machine briefly displayed Google inside FF then it hung completely and eventually crashed out.

On reboot W98 was in a sorry state - I have no graphics drivers, no sound drivers and neither the on-board 'clit' nor external mouse works - it reports three KBxxxxxx errors after booting up into windows.

I've removed the drivers for the Edimax USB wireless dongle and the PCMCIA card - but W98 no longer wants to play.

Does anybody know if it's possible to 'fix' 98 without doing a full reinstall (lots of apps installed that I don't want to have to reinstall if I don't have to) or if I have to do a full reinstall does anybody know if this will naff up the GRUB loader and if yes how do I get round that.

Any help much appreciated.

I guess when they said the USB Wireless dongle needed a min 1GHz P3 they meant it...

Wow.. thought I was the only one who could screw up a system like that...

I once managed to mess up a friends WinME system (yes, it actually was stable before this) by installing USB drivers for an external Zip drive, not realising that ME would build drivers on the fly... made it about as stable as a drunk 3-legged giraffe. Crashes and errors up the wazoo...

I had the same problem as you, didn't want to rebuild from scratch, on top of which there was a lot of non backed up data my friend couldn't afford to lose.

By dint of lots of perseverance, lots of attempts at installing drivers over and over again, and fixing one problem after another, (plus lots of skull-sweat researching things) I did manage to fix it. It took me a solid week of work, living on nothing but coffee and 4 hours sleep a night.

These days I'd just back up the data with a live linux cd, or Ultimate Boot CD running GetDataBack, and then rebuild from scratch.. even though that's a PITA, frankly, it's probably less work.

Yes, a re-install of Win98 will stuff up the boot loader, but there are ways around that. There are a number of programs which you can use to back up and restore boot sectors. Find the one that best suits your needs and back up the boot-sector before re-installing, then restore it afterwards.

Without looking, I seem to recall that most of these backup programs save to a floppy, which I'm guessing might be a problem, if you don't have a floppy drive you can use with the Thinkpad.

Alternatively, you could boot into Ubuntu and back up the boot sector from a command prompt as follows...

You can save the boot sector with the command:

dd if=/dev/hda of=/boot/boot.MBR bs=512 count=1

After installing Win98, you would need to boot up a linux rescue cd to restore the boot sector with the command:

dd if=/boot/boot.MBR of=/dev/hda bs=512 count=1


My brain is a little fried right now, so I may have missed some detail in the above, but this is the general idea.. a little research along these lines, along with some of the Linux gurus here, should be enough to set you on the right path..

Best of luck!!

there's the system file checker, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_File_Checker
you could try running that on it, i've never seen it repair anything though whenever i've used it, but there has to be a first time right?
Is the laptop now booting into 'safe mode' or something, that would explain all the missing graphics drivers and stuff - but if i remember correctly if this was the case it should be popping up those nag boxes you have to click 'ok' on before they go away with 'you are running in safemode' written on them

Sadly, I've already tried the SFC - and it doesn't work (or it doesn't find any problems).

I've got a floppy drive for the thinkpad (although I may not have any floppies!) so I will try and find a way to back up the boot sector to a floppy.

The good thing about having the UBuntu partition was that I was able to boot up into Linux and suck all my personal data off the 98 partition and onto the linux side - which is why I'm a bit scared of naffing up the boot loader and losing access to the Ubuntu partition (because it took me ages and much forum reading to get the Thinkpad to be happy under Fiesty).

When the machine boots up in safe mode the "mouse" drivers work, but gfx are limited to 640x480x16 and no sound. When I boot up "normally" - it says its got the mouse drivers, the gfx drivers and sound drivers but they don't work and removal and reinstall doesn't seem to work either and doing all this from the keyboard with no mouse to point and click is a pain the ass too!

Ho hum...

A couple of tools that would do the job:

BOOTSave 2.6 http://www.sharewareplaza.com/BOOTSave- ... 53075.html
Make a DOS boot floppy and install BOOTSave to the floppy, then boot the floppy and run the program.


Master Boot Record Save and Restore--Free Program
http://www.allthatcounts.com/comp/mbr.htm
See the readme for instructions.


Given the dubious quality of floppy disks these days, be sure to check that you have a readable, uncorrupted backup of the boot sector before you reinstall Win98!

DH - I supported Win95/98 way back when. If you can get to Safe Mode, we can fully recover you.

Boot to Safe Mode. Uninstall any recent driver or software you've installed. Reboot and test. If that doesn't work -

Click Start - Run - Umm... MSConfig.exe from the run line.

Post the content of your AutoExec.Bat and Config.Sys files to me via PM.

Clear any Non-Microsoft crap out of the Startup Group (Move them off to another folder, Do NOT Delete them).

Export the following Registry Keys to your C: drive, then delete all values in those keys:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunServices
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunServicesOnce

After all that, reboot to normal windows and make sure you don't recieve any errors. If you don't recieve any, start Undoing each of the steps one at a time... If a step (like the registry) had multiple values, restore one at a time if possible. Reboot and retest. You'll eventually find the culprit.

For a better walkthrough, use this article - How to Clean-Boot Troubleshoot Windows 98

You're a star - much appreciated - will do as you have requested/suggested and let you know.

I've owned three machines with W98SE on in the last 10 years and this is the first one that has ever bombed out so disastrously!