M
mm
My thanks to Martt and Ron a couple months ago for their advice on
restoring winME to a laptop.
I only asked in case, but what do you know, the in case happened. I
missed a step and fell with the laptop, an IBM Thinkpad 600E about 7
years old, andhit a stone floor with my knee and with the laptop in a
pretty thin shoulder bag. It worked fine after that.
(Specific questions below end in question marks, but I seem to have to
write this as a narrative, for it to make sense.)
But then about 6 weeks later I gave it a really really really big
whack, while it was running, and though it worked well for the rest of
the session, I couldn't start windows again in any mode. (In what
seems like a mistake to me, it gives 2 fewer choices than win98 does.
It doesn't give DOS mode, either safe or with autoexec.bat and
config.sys. Now I don't think have much or anything in those two
files, but it doesn't have the ability to just stop at DOS.)
Please tell me what I did right and what I did wrong after that and
what I should do....
I tried to start windows in logged and in safe modes, but in neither
case did it finish starting, and I got somewhat different answers, one
was that krnl386.exe was bad. I thought I woudl find that file on
line somewhere, copy it to a CD (my laptop has no floppy) and then
copy it to my computer, but a) I was pretty sure I'd damaged more than
one file, and b) I couldn't find it online anyhow in the time I had to
use someone else's computer.
I had left the two CD's for this laptop in another city but I went
there and one was labelled the startup CD for this computer, from when
it was sold with win98, but it said it was starting win95!
So I started DOS and checked and my email seemed to be there, and
later I read via DOS a couple emails that had addresses or phone
numbers that I hadn't copied to paper when I got them. So that was
good.
Then I ran scandisk, and while it took about 90 minutes for 6 gigs
when things were fine, it took about 3 days to do a fourth of the disk
this time, finding about 400 bad clusters, some of which it said it
repaired and others it said it probably didn't, or didn't. By this
time I was counting on my WinME disk to reinstall windows,
but I thought I should finish the scandisk first, right?????
So I did, with about 700 bad clusters out of 1.5 million. That's a
drop in the bucket, but am I right that there could be ruined files
that scandisk doesn't find or correct????
Then I went to the Windows ME CD. It is an Upgrade disk, and it ran
fine until the middle of copying in the files. Then it stopped at the
10% mark. I ran it four times and it always stopped at 10%. The
CD-rom light goes off, the hard drive light is on and stays on, and
after 30 or 60 seconds I can hear the hard drive making the same kind
of noisss that it makes during scandisk when it is working on a bad
cluster: buzz buzz buzz.. That is, boozz (for a second or two) silence
for a second, boozz for a second or two, silence for a second, and the
same thing a third time. Then a 4 or 5 second period of silence and it
starts up again.
I figure it should be able to copy anything it finds on the CD, so it
must be that it it trying to copy to a part of the harddisk that is
bad, but that scan disk hasnt' marked yet**. (I ran scandisk through
the first 70%of the disk at least 5 passes, and finished the whole
disk on the last 2 of those passes. It didn't find any problems the
last time, but it did find one bad cluster on the fourth time and two
on the third.)
**If this is the case, should I just run scandisk for another 5 or 10
passes??????? (10 passes will take 15 hours, which is no problem.
I'm home now and don't need the laptop until it's time to show my
photos to friends.)
Or should I look for the .CAB files that Mart told me about and that
Ron said would likely work better than a retail ME upgrade version.
Or should I delete*** a lot of the windows files and free up space
that is good so that I get winME reinstalled without getting stuck at
10% of the way though????????
***(I wouldn't delete the CAB files Mart told me about, referred to in
the next paragraph
Mart, I remembered your advice about the windows ME files likely to be
on the hard disk, but I couldn't remember where they were supposed to
be and I forgot your implication and Ron's specific warning that a
retail upgrade CD not for the laptop might not work right compared to
an Upgrade designed for the laptop. OTOH, I don't actually know that
the laptop was upgraded with such a specific CD. (When the laptop
worked, I saw that there is a bunch of special Thinkpad software on
it, but I don't know if that was installed when 98 was installed and
it still worked after ME was installed, or if it was also installed as
part of the ME upgrade)
Or is there some method I haven't thought at all about???
The computer worked fine until the last 10 days of my rather long
trip, so I have no complaints about it or about the effort it took to
take it, and the fault is entirely my own, and not the ebay seller.
Thanks a lot.
If you are inclined to email me
for some reason, remove NOPSAM
restoring winME to a laptop.
I only asked in case, but what do you know, the in case happened. I
missed a step and fell with the laptop, an IBM Thinkpad 600E about 7
years old, andhit a stone floor with my knee and with the laptop in a
pretty thin shoulder bag. It worked fine after that.
(Specific questions below end in question marks, but I seem to have to
write this as a narrative, for it to make sense.)
But then about 6 weeks later I gave it a really really really big
whack, while it was running, and though it worked well for the rest of
the session, I couldn't start windows again in any mode. (In what
seems like a mistake to me, it gives 2 fewer choices than win98 does.
It doesn't give DOS mode, either safe or with autoexec.bat and
config.sys. Now I don't think have much or anything in those two
files, but it doesn't have the ability to just stop at DOS.)
Please tell me what I did right and what I did wrong after that and
what I should do....
I tried to start windows in logged and in safe modes, but in neither
case did it finish starting, and I got somewhat different answers, one
was that krnl386.exe was bad. I thought I woudl find that file on
line somewhere, copy it to a CD (my laptop has no floppy) and then
copy it to my computer, but a) I was pretty sure I'd damaged more than
one file, and b) I couldn't find it online anyhow in the time I had to
use someone else's computer.
I had left the two CD's for this laptop in another city but I went
there and one was labelled the startup CD for this computer, from when
it was sold with win98, but it said it was starting win95!
So I started DOS and checked and my email seemed to be there, and
later I read via DOS a couple emails that had addresses or phone
numbers that I hadn't copied to paper when I got them. So that was
good.
Then I ran scandisk, and while it took about 90 minutes for 6 gigs
when things were fine, it took about 3 days to do a fourth of the disk
this time, finding about 400 bad clusters, some of which it said it
repaired and others it said it probably didn't, or didn't. By this
time I was counting on my WinME disk to reinstall windows,
but I thought I should finish the scandisk first, right?????
So I did, with about 700 bad clusters out of 1.5 million. That's a
drop in the bucket, but am I right that there could be ruined files
that scandisk doesn't find or correct????
Then I went to the Windows ME CD. It is an Upgrade disk, and it ran
fine until the middle of copying in the files. Then it stopped at the
10% mark. I ran it four times and it always stopped at 10%. The
CD-rom light goes off, the hard drive light is on and stays on, and
after 30 or 60 seconds I can hear the hard drive making the same kind
of noisss that it makes during scandisk when it is working on a bad
cluster: buzz buzz buzz.. That is, boozz (for a second or two) silence
for a second, boozz for a second or two, silence for a second, and the
same thing a third time. Then a 4 or 5 second period of silence and it
starts up again.
I figure it should be able to copy anything it finds on the CD, so it
must be that it it trying to copy to a part of the harddisk that is
bad, but that scan disk hasnt' marked yet**. (I ran scandisk through
the first 70%of the disk at least 5 passes, and finished the whole
disk on the last 2 of those passes. It didn't find any problems the
last time, but it did find one bad cluster on the fourth time and two
on the third.)
**If this is the case, should I just run scandisk for another 5 or 10
passes??????? (10 passes will take 15 hours, which is no problem.
I'm home now and don't need the laptop until it's time to show my
photos to friends.)
Or should I look for the .CAB files that Mart told me about and that
Ron said would likely work better than a retail ME upgrade version.
Or should I delete*** a lot of the windows files and free up space
that is good so that I get winME reinstalled without getting stuck at
10% of the way though????????
***(I wouldn't delete the CAB files Mart told me about, referred to in
the next paragraph
Mart, I remembered your advice about the windows ME files likely to be
on the hard disk, but I couldn't remember where they were supposed to
be and I forgot your implication and Ron's specific warning that a
retail upgrade CD not for the laptop might not work right compared to
an Upgrade designed for the laptop. OTOH, I don't actually know that
the laptop was upgraded with such a specific CD. (When the laptop
worked, I saw that there is a bunch of special Thinkpad software on
it, but I don't know if that was installed when 98 was installed and
it still worked after ME was installed, or if it was also installed as
part of the ME upgrade)
Or is there some method I haven't thought at all about???
The computer worked fine until the last 10 days of my rather long
trip, so I have no complaints about it or about the effort it took to
take it, and the fault is entirely my own, and not the ebay seller.
Thanks a lot.
If you are inclined to email me
for some reason, remove NOPSAM