TSGL: Reformat Restore Can't Do It

[Don Penlington]

Dave wrote:
>I apologize
>that this reply is so long, too long, I'm afraid.>>


A question cannot be too long. But it can (and often is) too short.  The 
more info given, the easier it is to not only diagnose the problem, but 
also to eliminate or confirm certain possibilities.

<<"Drive HITACHI DVD-ROM GD-2500-8BHAR is reporting Partition percentage has
exceeded 90%.">>

Is this telling you that your hard drive, or at least the partition 
containing the OS, is near full?  That would be one reason why W98 won't 
start, and you'd have other problems as well. You need at least 10% of free 
space.

For boot disks and related info:

http://www.bootdisk.com/

http://www.onecomputerguy.com/install/floppies.htm (You can download a W98 
boot floppy image here).

Or, if your other computer is on broadband, I could send you the contents 
of my W98SE boot floppy--all you need to do is copy them onto a floppy, 
then change the boot order in the BIOS.

You can reformat from the boot floppy, provided your system is FAT32 (one 
of the few advantages of W98 over XP).  I've never had to do it, but I 
think the command from the C: prompt is:

     format C: /s.

That will reformat C and copy over the basic system files. Others may 
confirm or correct that. Some people prefer it without the "/s" switch. I'm 
not sure which way is preferable. Dave will know.

<<It's 7 years old.
Does that life span also apply to CD-R's?  I have archived much data on
CD-R's.  It would be very disappointing to find out they are no longer any
good.>>

Yes. You should duplicate any important disks. Labelling can shorten the 
life of cheaper CD's drastically. Read Fred Langa's archives on this--he 
researched it about a year ago.

<< I can "read" the IBM
Restore Disk so wouldn't that indicate that it's OK?>>

Not necessarily. You may be able to read the index of contents---but that 
does not mean that no data has not been corrupted. On a Windows install 
disk, one missing letter or dot COULD trash a vital file---enough to throw 
the whole installation out.

I can't help feeling that the error messages you are seeing are related to 
the fact that the restore disk is not "seeing" a clean computer---one of 
the huge negatives of manufacturers restore disks.

I suppose there COULD be similar issues if RAM was defective. Try 
re-seating it again, can't do any harm.

I would guess your "Fonts" problem might be symptomatic of deeper 
problems---unless you have so many fonts that your RAM + Memory Swapfile 
space on C-Drive has been completely overwhelmed.  Hardly likely unless you 
had thousands of them.

<<I probably made a mistake at that time as I renamed the
Fonts folder in Windows System and copied & pasted the Fonts folder from my
other IBM PC. >>

That in itself shouldn't have created any problems.

<<I found there were too many fonts
loaded, but as stated above, I couldn't read or delete any of them>>

That seems to confirm a faulty RAM problem.  Remember, all Fonts are loaded 
into memory every time Windows boots.

Also check that all fans are clean and working. Overheating can cause some 
mighty funny and unpredictable error messages. On an old computer, you 
could also suspect failing mobo, power supply.

I agree with Dave---it's uneconomic spending too much money on a W98 system 
which is now well beyond its use-by date. If the computer is 7 years old, 
you can expect things to start failing. (Like us, multiplied by 10).

Don Penlington








 From the Beach at Surfers Paradise in sunny Queensland.
Computer tutorials, local scenery,  and other things at my website:
http://users.tpg.com.au/deepend/index1.html