HELPPPPP!

jamesjermain

jamesjermain

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My PC laptop has crashed with half my life on it. It stalls on boot-up with an error message saying he DISPLAY.SYS file is missing or corrupted and the CONFIG.SYS file has an error in line one. Also that the COUNTRY.SYS file is also missing or corrupted and there's an error in CONFIG.SYS line 2.

The maker's help line says I have to run the recovery disc which means I lose everything. While most is backed up on a zip drive, the prospect of having to reload a dozen programmes plus loosing a weeks worth of records, articles etc, is hardly good news.

Can anyone out there offer an alternative - PLEASE?

<hr width=100% size=1>JJ
 
Re: an idea

If you hold down F8 key when it says "starting windows" it should boot to an olde worlde DOS prompt. Then you will be able to find another machine with same operating system and copy display.sys across on a floppy.

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Re: an idea

yep - boot up in safe mode and edit the errors from the files. But sounds like more than a simple fix - what happened to cause the problem?

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Re: an idea

hmm - if it was 'on the job' rather than at boot up or a result of tinkering then it could be down to corruption/power surge/disc crash. Does it boot in Safe Mode?

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Have you done a virus scan recently?

<hr width=100% size=1><A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.stingo.co.uk>http://www.stingo.co.uk</A> <font color=blue>- still showing at a computer near you</font color=blue>
 
Reload Windows xx

But don't do it yourself. Get an engineer in to do it for you. In theory it's only the system and possibly one of the FAT files that have gone awol. All you info is still there.

When he's recovered you, ask him what the best way is to backup your current working files .....

But from what you've said, I think that you've got a laptop with no operating system CD to hand. All MS based systems will crash sooner rather than later ... and if you haven't got the OS CD then you are .... Just make sure that you have the CD to reload to operating system.

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Difficult to be prescriptive without knowing the version of Windows and the installation. Sounds like an earlier version (Win95/98) that has corrupted its disk.

First thing is to copy the data off - boot from a DOS floppy and manually copy over files/directories to the Zip or network. You should have the emergency boot disk from the Windows installation or if lucky from the Zip installation, which prompts for creating an emergency floppy that will include the Zip drivers. Otherwise can create a DOS floppy on another Windows machine by formating it with the system option or an emergency floppy using Control Panel+Add/Remove Programs+StartupDisk.

Once the data is safely copied it may be possible to reinstall Windows without overwriting the previous data and programs - this requires either that you have the original Windows CD or that the laptop has a copy of all installation files on the hard drive, as most seem to. In the former case insert the CD from DOS and run setup.exe on the CD to start Windows dialog - requires that the the DOS disk has the CD drives installed. In the latter case launch C:\Windows\setup.exe and see what comes up.

If the HDD formatting is damaged will need to repair before trying to reinstall Windows - Spinrite 5 from www.grc.com does a good but slow (hours) job without destroying any files.

Hope this helps - installations vary so much that it usually comes down to a lot of trial and error.


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James

Assuming from your description that its W98 OS. The Country.sys file should be in the C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND directory. It could be that the CONFIG.SYS file has been corrupted and is pointing elsewhere.

Use F8 to boot to DOS only and then open the config file (type 'edit c:\config.sys'). take a look at the line referencing country.sys, something like:

COUNTRY=044,,C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\COUNTRY.SYS

correct this if necessary then save the file and exit. Type
'dir c:\windows\command\country.sys'
to confirm the file is there.

Always difficult to remote diagnose but have a go.

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Most certainly could be the heat. Keepem away from the sun. Loads of puter probs on hot days and freezing days are due to teensy expansion of hard disks which often come back later in the day

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More help please

Tome,

Verry many thanks for your help. Can't do what you suggested because I get a bad command error. However, on doing a step-by-step conformation boot I get a message that display.sys is currupted then a line saying line one of config.sys has an error. followed by:
COUNTRY=044,850,C:\.....etc.
When I OK that I get a message saying Country.sys is corrupt or missing with an error in Config.sys line 2. This is followed by
DEVICE=C:WINDOWS\HIMEN.SYS
when I try to OK that nothing happens.

Sorry to bother you again . Ignore me if you can't help further.


<hr width=100% size=1>JJ
 
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