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Windows 3.11 no longer starts after trying to start Microsoft Dogs

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First post, by delsydebothom

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This strikes me as an odd sequence of events. I tried to start Microsoft Dogs, and noticed its icon was missing--its entry in Program Manager showed a generic icon. I tried to start it anyway, and it told me the working directory was invalid. I didn't think this to be much of a problem, and tried to launch it from the CD directly. This prompted it to say it needed to restart Windows to finish installing system files. Windows, however, no longer starts. I've had no luck finding useful info from bootlog.txt; nothing looks like it didn't work. Typing WIN, though, briefly brings up the splash screen, and then drops back to DOS without an error message. I think the letters MWR appear briefly before the C prompt appears, but I can read them fast enough to know for sure.

Things I have tried:

Installing generic VGA video drivers
Running memmaker
Running Windows without networking (win /n)

Short of reinstalling Windows, anyone have any ideas? Thanks!

Reply 1 of 5, by verysaving

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From DOS using EDIT, take a look at WIN.INI and SYSTEM.INI
in the WINDOWS directory. Check for some reference to missing
files.
I would look at any other *.INI file and CONFIG.SYS and
AUTOEXEC.BAT too.
Check for errors in the drive with SCANDISK.

Reply 2 of 5, by delsydebothom

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verysaving wrote on 2024-05-12, 23:15:
From DOS using EDIT, take a look at WIN.INI and SYSTEM.INI in the WINDOWS directory. Check for some reference to missing files. […]
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From DOS using EDIT, take a look at WIN.INI and SYSTEM.INI
in the WINDOWS directory. Check for some reference to missing
files.
I would look at any other *.INI file and CONFIG.SYS and
AUTOEXEC.BAT too.
Check for errors in the drive with SCANDISK.

Thank you! Making an attempt and doing just that left me without success. But I encountered another puzzle. I decided to just go ahead and try to reinstall Windows. The setup program worked fine until it reached the end of disk 2 and tried to start the graphical portion of the installation. Then it dropped back to the prompt like it has been. I wondered if maybe the graphics adapter was acting up, so I launched Strife to check. Works fine. This really has me scratching my head, but if I can figure it out, I'll have learned something new about Windows 3.1.

Reply 4 of 5, by darry

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Hmm, maybe something is wrong at the storage level.

What are you using as a c:\ drive ?
Did you try running Scandisk or Chkdsk (depending on the DOS version used) to verify for any anomalies ?

Reply 5 of 5, by delsydebothom

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darry wrote on 2024-05-14, 05:46:

Hmm, maybe something is wrong at the storage level.

What are you using as a c:\ drive ?
Did you try running Scandisk or Chkdsk (depending on the DOS version used) to verify for any anomalies ?

Yes, it appear that was the case. There is one bad sector on the disk. Upon running scandisk and "fixing" it, Windows would still not load, but it would (finally) reinstall, and is now back up and running. Looks like it is time to back everything up and get a new HDD. I am looking at this thing, and realizing it is quite old. It came with the computer (a Thinkpad 600), but it is 10.1 GB, so I'm not sure it is the original. Maybe I'll get an IDE SSD. I figure that's what I ought to have done when I got the machine, but I was too impatient.

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