Is it hopeless, yall

Cursed Derp wrote on 2024-09-23, 18:28:

Is it hopeless, yall

If you don't give us a bit more context, it is.

For starters, please answer the following questions :

What hardware are you running (motherboard, disk controller, HDD model and capacity, amount of RAM) ?
Did you install any patches or updates ?
Was it working before and something happened ?
Is it a clean Windows installation or did you migrate it from another system ?
Are you overclocking anything ?

I have a Dell Dimension 4100. Can't see the disk controller cuz no device manager cuz windows won't boot. My hdd is a 20gb (although it's read as 16gb cuz windows) Samsung SV2001H. I think I have 64mb ram. Either that or 128. I'll check later. It was working before I installed Scitech display doctor then this happened so I uninstalled it in safe mode but nothing changed. I also recently installed unicode for windows, daemon tools, 7zip, winrar and kernelex
The install was clean
No overclocking

Cursed Derp wrote on 2024-09-24, 15:11:

I have a Dell Dimension 4100. Can't see the disk controller cuz no device manager cuz windows won't boot. My hdd is a 20gb (although it's read as 16gb cuz windows) Samsung SV2001H. I think I have 64mb ram. Either that or 128. I'll check later. It was working before I installed Scitech display doctor then this happened so I uninstalled it in safe mode but nothing changed. I also recently installed unicode for windows, daemon tools, 7zip, winrar and kernelex
The install was clean
No overclocking

If you are lucky then Win98 SE made backups of system files after successful boots. By default scanregw.exe writes rb00x.cab files to Windows\SYSBCKUP folder. Inside these cab files you can find 4 files: system.ini, win.ini, system.dat, user.dat.
With the ini files from the backup you should overwrite the ones with the same names in your Windows folder and with the dat files you should overwrite the ones with the same name in your Windows\System folder.
You can do the overwrite even from your working DOS.

Falcosoft wrote on 2024-09-24, 17:27:

Cursed Derp wrote on 2024-09-24, 15:11:

I have a Dell Dimension 4100. Can't see the disk controller cuz no device manager cuz windows won't boot. My hdd is a 20gb (although it's read as 16gb cuz windows) Samsung SV2001H. I think I have 64mb ram. Either that or 128. I'll check later. It was working before I installed Scitech display doctor then this happened so I uninstalled it in safe mode but nothing changed. I also recently installed unicode for windows, daemon tools, 7zip, winrar and kernelex
The install was clean
No overclocking

If you are lucky then Win98 SE made backups of system files after successful boots. By default scanregw.exe writes rb00x.cab files to Windows\SYSBCKUP folder. Inside these cab files you can find 4 files: system.ini, win.ini, system.dat, user.dat.
With the ini files from the backup you should overwrite the ones with the same names in your Windows folder and with the dat files you should overwrite the ones with the same name in your Windows\System folder.

Cool didn't know that
I'll try it later

Falcosoft wrote on 2024-09-24, 17:27:

Cursed Derp wrote on 2024-09-24, 15:11:

I have a Dell Dimension 4100. Can't see the disk controller cuz no device manager cuz windows won't boot. My hdd is a 20gb (although it's read as 16gb cuz windows) Samsung SV2001H. I think I have 64mb ram. Either that or 128. I'll check later. It was working before I installed Scitech display doctor then this happened so I uninstalled it in safe mode but nothing changed. I also recently installed unicode for windows, daemon tools, 7zip, winrar and kernelex
The install was clean
No overclocking

If you are lucky then Win98 SE made backups of system files after successful boots. By default scanregw.exe writes rb00x.cab files to Windows\SYSBCKUP folder. Inside these cab files you can find 4 files: system.ini, win.ini, system.dat, user.dat.
With the ini files from the backup you should overwrite the ones with the same names in your Windows folder and with the dat files you should overwrite the ones with the same name in your Windows\System folder.

Cool didn't know that
I'll try it later
Uh didn't mean to post twice sorry

Damn. I copied the files and this still happened. I'll send screenshots of my config.sys and autoexec

Here's the screenshots
If you need txt files I can get those to you later but not now

And when I put DOS=SINGLE back into the config.sys and try to run windows, the pc just restarts back to dos

Why is there no
DEVICE=C:\Windows\Ifshlp.sys
in config.sys ?

This is one of the possible causes for that error.

https://www.datadoctors.com/help/question/292 … ization-failed/

EDIT: If the issue started after installing/applying "Phil's Computer Lab dos starter pack", it is not unexpected as the web page for that states :

This starter pack has been tested with MS-DOS 6.22 and 7.1. DO NOT install this starter pack in Windows 95 or 98 MS-DOS mode. It is meant for pure MS-DOS only.

I find the statement a bit ambiguous, but I think that means that this should not be used on a system where you expect Windows 95 or 98 to actually be started into Windows' graphical interface.

Source: https://www.philscomputerlab.com/ms-dos-starter-pack.html

EDIT2: Especially if you want to experiment and try new or otherwise untested things, I suggest you consider a backup strategy to easily recover from failed experiments. Backups are also nice to have because Windows 9x can easily end up corrupted just through normal use as it is much less robust than newer OSes.

Cursed Derp wrote on 2024-09-24, 22:30:

And when I put DOS=SINGLE back into the config.sys and try to run windows, the pc just restarts back to dos

First I've heard of DOS=SINGLE but from searching around, it causes Windows 9x to start in MS-DOS mode so it's doing exactly what you told it to. Just it remove it then?

(I usually use BootGUI=0 in MSDOS.SYS instead and set up a separate boot menu entry to run WIN to start Windows)

Did you partition and format the hard drive in the computer you are using it in or on another machine and transfer it over?

Ah okay that worked. Thanks! I dont know why that was missing from the config file. For some reason the mouse doesn't work now tho...

Also I just want to say that I actually used Phil's Ms dos mode super easy guide
I just used the wrong name for it