I volunteered [like a dope] to try to bail out my cousins computer, 4+ hours and i'm lost. It's old, WIN 95, They have some files, photo's, etc, they want to save, but it's a mess. When it tries to load, a message comes up " system ini. file corrupt or missing" "you may need to reinstall windows or drivers" Well, i've done it twice, same message. I've tried boot disks, etc. No help. I can get to where I can format the disk, but i'll lose their files if I do. I found a way online to rename the system ini, but I can't get to MS-DOS. Any help for a drowning man?
Take the hard drive out and hook it to a newer windows machine. Copy its contents to another drive.
You cant get to a command prompt on startup by hitting f8?
You can also get to the DOS prompt by loading the startup disk. When it comes up to the flashing A > prompt, you are in DOS. Just type in C: and it should change over to the hard drive.
Stew
Jeff & Stew, I've been there, everything I try to type in comes up "bad command or file name" I think I tried C after the A> Stew, and it did change to C: - Is that where I try to change the file name?
Sounds like windows is badly broken.
Use treebucker's plan of removing the disk, slaving it into another machine and making a copy of all the files you can read off it. Then burn them to a CD for safekeeping.
Then find them a more up to date PC ;)
Or if you really want to punish yourself you can then re-format the old disk and reload win95 ::)
Cheers
Ian
You get "bad command or file name" because there is no DOS command installed for that function you typed or a DOS directory is not assigned so the system does not know where to look for the command. Also, there may be a missing command.com . You might be able to hold the C key down on boot with a Windows Recover CD in the drive to get to windows. I think it's long over due for a new system. ;D
I work on these things and treebucker is dead on. When you hook up the hard drive to the second plug in on the ribbon coming from the master drive in the good computer, be sure to set the jumper on the disk you want to copy from to SLAVE.
Then go to windows explorer and you can drag and drop the files off the corrupted drive to the good drive.
Hope I explained this ok?
Robert in Virginia
O.K., thanks guys - tomorrow's another try. If I can get their files off, they don't care, we may use it for target practice then. A high school kid I know that does the robotics programing can probably tie two computers together, me, i'm happier with a Stihl or a Briggs&Stratton tore apart in front of me -
Quote from: mike_van on February 12, 2007, 06:14:47 PM
it did change to C: - Is that where I try to change the file name?
You can try typing in DIR from the C prompt, it should list the files and folders in the root directory of the drive, if that works, to get into the file structure deeper, you have to use the command CD to change directories. The SYS.INI file and the COMMAND.COM file should be in the root directory.
I have to agree though, connecting the drive as a slave to another machine would be the best bet...the picture files you want to recover are not going to fit on a floppy disk and I doubt the CD drive will be working from this prompt. The burning software definitely will not work since Windows won't load. Once the files are transfered, you can reformat the drive to erase everything off. If it is big enough, you can just leave it in the other machine as a second hard drive for storage.
Stew
mike_van,
Wouldn't it be fun practicing on it with your Stihl?
Sounds like a compressed drive w/o drivers. Deb's machine did the same thing way back when she tried to load some game on it. I may have a set of Win95 rescue floppies saved at home, I'll poke around when I get there.
IMO, compressing a drive is the worst thing you can do. If you get to the point where you need more space, get a bigger hard drive.
Stew
treebucker, at this point, i'd rather practice on it with the .223 at 200 yards :D :D Just to watch the plastic fly - 8)
When you have that kind of problem on a Windows 98 computer, you fix it by installing over what is there. Windows 95 is an odd duck in that you cannot reinstall over it. If you can get to a prompt, rename the Windows folder to Winold or something. Then you can install Windows 95 again and make it work.
Did you try to create a new System.ini file (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/140441)?
I went through the whole rename deal today, no luck. Same as before. The high school kid "volunteered" to pull the files off the hard drive this weekend. What a pain, you just know it's a few steps away from being "right" - I just don't know which ones. Kinda like a baler that miss-ties every other bale. Isn't it? :D
Yeah - kinda, but sure not as dusty as dat.....
Maybe it belongs in the baler - :D I did find a RegCure program online for win 95 & downloaded it to a floppy, supposed to fix 220 problems. Don't know if it will load now, but it's free so it's worth a try.
Well now beenthere, depends if the user was a heavy smoker. I inherited a computer from an ex employee once that was covered in ashes in the keyboard and motherboard. Lots of dust there. :D The keys were also covered in just about anything the guy ate for the last 5 years. I got out the cleaning alcohol and such and took 3 hours to clean it up. After a few months it finally calved, was glad to be rid of it.
There's light at the end of the tunnel here - finally - The highschool senior lifted the needed files off the old hard drive, some were Quickbooks needed for this years taxes. Well, they were made with a '99 QB edition that the cd was no longer around for. Couldn't open them. Tried this & that, and everything in between too. A phone call to QB and a helpful lady there that emailed me a 30 day FREE 2006 QB program, installed on my Dell, [huge, 250mb] Got it allmost installed, up pops a window that says "this program won't run on Win 98" So, I emailed the link to wife's with XP, installed there, now it says "unable to open files, they are read only" You have to copy them from the cd to the desktop, then, finally - There they were 8) I ordered my cousin a new computer from Dell last night, they have some good deals there on re-furbished, scratch & dent, etc. An Optiplex with XP, Pen 4, 256 MB ram, some other stuff for 289.00. Also bought new QB 2007 there for 169.00. Compared to his old set-up, he'll think he's working at Microsoft or NASA now - :D
I just realised why you couldn't rename that system.ini file from C:, great timing. :D
system.ini is in the windows directory. ::)