Blue Screen of Death

[WillyBWright]

A few months back, I was cleaning up a few files from an old computer that I want to let my kids use for their computer games. Last step was a defrag, but it locked up during the process and won't boot anymore. It barely starts Windows 98, but displays error messages and finally blue-screens. So I just want to dump everything and start over. I bought it used years ago and didn't get any reloading discs.

NEC Ready 9522
100MHz Pentium
Just under 1 gig hard drive
60MB RAM
Floppy
CD-Rom
Windows 98 with the following errors in order:
Rundll32
Mstask
Runonce
Explorer
Explorer
Explorer
blue screen

I have Limewire and a CD Burner. What do I need and how do I format the drive?

The kids are 7 and 9, and I have stacks of old Windows 98 games and educational CDs.. That's why I want to let them use a computer that I otherwise don't use. Mechanically it's fine.

 

[Tail_Gunner]

Re: Blue Screen of Death

What type of hard drive do you have? (brand name) If i were you id make sure your hard drive is still good, you can download a diag utility from the web site of the HD mfg.

Here is a complete tutorial on formatting 98

http://www.replacement-windows-hq.com/window-tips/how-to-install-windows.html

 

[Plainsman]

Re: Blue Screen of Death

Do you have a win98 cd with a cd key? Do you have another win98 machine that is working? A 1GB HDD is very small, even for win98.

Those errors are the result of a corrupt OS, but I'd run the HDD diag like TG said before I'd do anything else.

 

[Boomyal]

Re: Blue Screen of Death

Do you have a win98 cd with a cd key? Do you have another win98 machine that is working? A 1GB HDD is very small, even for win98.

Those errors are the result of a corrupt OS, but I'd run the HDD diag like TG said before I'd do anything else.

How would WBW be able to use another machine with Win 98 on it?

 

[WillyBWright]

Re: Blue Screen of Death

I have 2 computers with XP

I downloaded the diagnostic from Maxtor and put it on a floppy.

I can't get past NTLDR is missing. Will formatting correct that?

BIOS recognizes the hard drive. BIOS matches the specs on the drive.

I downloaded a Windows 98 startup floppy and a Windows 98 bootable CD. If they work, fine. If the computer goes to the attic and collects dust, fine.

 

[i386]

Re: Blue Screen of Death

If you want to kill the NTLDR message just boot up your win98 startup disk and type: fdisk /mbr

That'll clear the MBR (master boot record).

 

[WillyBWright]

Re: Blue Screen of Death

Even DOS was fubar. It's formatted now with MS-DOS 6.22 loaded including the options. So now I'm ready to install Windows 98. I entered DOSSHELL and the CD-Rom isn't assigned a letter, so I can't run Windows setup. I tried to download a driver from the IBM site, but they don't seem to have a driver for my IBM p/n 36L8787. It is the CD-Rom that I removed from this computer when I installed the CD-RW, so there is a driver for it in here somewhere. What do I do now?

 

[i386]

Re: Blue Screen of Death

If you'll just boot up using the Win98 Startup Disk it'll load a driver for the CD drive. If you have a proper Win98 CD you can just boot from the CD and go straight into setup..

 

[Tail_Gunner]

Re: Blue Screen of Death

I have 2 computers with XP

I downloaded the diagnostic from Maxtor and put it on a floppy.

I can't get past NTLDR is missing. Will formatting correct that?

BIOS recognizes the hard drive. BIOS matches the specs on the drive.

I downloaded a Windows 98 startup floppy and a Windows 98 bootable CD. If they work, fine. If the computer goes to the attic and collects dust, fine.

If it were me id do a complete wipe using the diag utility, not much to lose here you OS is hosed............. Umm can you start up using the system without networking?

I cant remeber if you can with 98 but if you can id try it, rare possibilty but one of your card's could be boinked.

 

[Plainsman]

Re: Blue Screen of Death

Do you have a win98 cd with a cd key? Do you have another win98 machine that is working? A 1GB HDD is very small, even for win98.

Those errors are the result of a corrupt OS, but I'd run the HDD diag like TG said before I'd do anything else.

How would WBW be able to use another machine with Win 98 on it?

To make a boot disk, then do as i386 said. fdisk /mbr, then fdisk the drive and then format the drive.

 

[WillyBWright]

Re: Blue Screen of Death

Drive is formatted. I noticed that the CD Rom I took out had a jumper on Slave and the one I put in was on Master, so now the one I put in is on Slave. I also found a driver and loaded it. But it still isn't assigned a letter, so I can't access it from DOS to run the Windows CD. If I can get over this last hurdle, I should be able to install Windows. As a last resort, I have 95 on a bunch of floppys, but I'd much rather have 98. That and when I tried it a few months ago, one of the floppys wouldn't read.

I downloaded a diagnostic for the hard drive, but it wants Windows to run. So I did a surface scan with SCANDISK. The hard drive looks happy.

I also did the fdisk /mbr and it did something for several seconds and came back to the prompt. Then I ran fdisk and it showed what I assume is good data, but I had no idea what to do with any of it, so I exited. I still get the NTDLR is missing with the startup disk

The hard drive is IDE Adapter 0 Master and the CD-Rom is IDE Adapter 1 Slave. Am I on the right track?

 

[Plainsman]

Re: Blue Screen of Death

If the drives are on the same IDE cable, then you have it correct. 1 master (the hdd) and 1 slave (the cd-rom). If they are on seperate cables, the both should be set to master.

You can do 1 of 2 things.

1. go into the bios and make the first boot device the cd-rom, then boot to the cd

2. Use the win 98 boot disk and choose the option to load the cd-rom driver, then from dos type d: or e: or f one of those will be the cdrom. I don't think you need "cd" in front f those drive choices.
When you change to the drive letter type dir, this will list the contents of the drive. Once at the cd rom drive type setup.exe