Reinstalling Windows 98

[blim]

Hi All!

Well, we did the "kind" thing and ran Adaware and Spybot S&D on the Possessed Gateway and really broke it --illegal operation boxes on lots of stuff and no internet explorer, no internet, which is mainly what we use it for now.

To make a long story short, is reinstalling Windows a "take it to Best Buy repairman thing" or can a kindergarten techy do this?? We have the Window98 CD, Gateway Restoration CD, the CD that Word came on and a CD for our Cable Internet (others too, but these seem the most important). This computer is our "back up" now because it hasn't worked right from its 1 month birthday and used only for internet access, Word (which we copy to floppy since the printer is connected to the Dell now), and the occasional game. I just want a fresh "factory settings" start and if it is beyond me, I'd gladly pay a Repairman!

Another thing, it only has a 10 Gigawatt Hard Drive (which we were told 5 1/2 years ago, "you'll NEVER fill this up" Ha!) I think it has 2746 mbs left--is this enough space to reinstall windows or should I get a new hard drive too? There is a lot of "Gateway installed junk" and games that are already on CDs that we can remove (if the dang thing lets us!). Microsoft's Site Instructions made no sense and I trust you folks a lot more than the Best Buy salesmen!

If you want to hear the "long story", I can post it but its ugly!

Just in case: Pentium 2 350mhz

10 GB Hard Drive

256 GB Ram

Win98 Fat 32

Floppy Drive, DVD Drive and CD Burner Drive

Thanks, Liz

[Snaxe]

I can't say for 98, but it is extremely easy for XP. For XP, all it requires is popping the CD in and following the simple, step-by-step instructions. As for space, XP by itself takes about 6 GB. I assume 98 is smaller, so you shouldn't have to be worried about space.

[robroy]

From the sound of things Liz, you need to do a clean install.

This means that you will have to reformat the drive, First thing to do is to format a floppy as a boot disk

Format floppy

Then you will need to format the hard drive

Format Hard Drive

After this put the Win98 cd in the drive and follow the step by step instructions.. Make sure you have the code ready to enter when asked, it should be on the win 98 cd case

We will talk you through if you feel up to trying this

[TheTerrorist_75]

Gateway restoration.

Restoring Software

Reinstalling Device Drivers

Gateway support / downloads

[macmarauder]

yeah, reinstalling windows 98 is not all that bad from a clean install. it's mostly just like any other software except in your case you should zero out the drive.

even thought your smart enough to have already done this here's a few links on installing windows.

Information Week

Dewassoc

Microsoft

here's a site that has screen grabs for each step.

Geek Stop & Go

[blim]

Hi All,

Am going thru the links--thank you all so much! (feel free to keep the advice coming) Son goofed around with the Possessed Gateway today and yes, the internet explorer is definitely broken--not even showing in add/remove programs anymore, yet the desktop shortcut and the icon in the left side of the taskbar are still there. The firewall works (log shows baddies being blocked) and Spybot Teatimer works, but AIM doesn't work and its the Mcafee Updates giving us the illegal operation boxes. Assuming these gadgets need IE to work.

Questions: (there will be a lot of 'em )

1. The Possessed Gateway "came" with FAT32--supposed to be "good". Is that something that happens automatically or do I do something after the Brain Transplant?

2. Also (oh Terrorist!!! Wasn't it you who recently dealt with a Possessed Gateway?) am leaning towards using Gateway's instructions--starting with the System Restore CD then Win98 CD. The instructions conflict a bit.

On one source, it looks like the System Restore CD "tells" the idiot box to boot to the CD on restart, looks fairly easy, yet another source (The "instructions" that came with the System Restore CD) says (and I quote):

Press F1 at startup to enter system setup utility

Use arrow keys to highlight the Boot Options menu item

Press enter to select the Boot Options menu

Highlight First Boot Device then press Enter

In the menu that appears, highlight CD-ROM then press enter

Highlight Second Boot Device then press Enter (at this point I'm getting lost)

In the menu that appears, highlight Floppy then press Enter

Highlight Third Boot Device then press Enter (really lost now--why?)

In the menu that appears highlight Hard Disk then press Enter

Press F10, then Enter

The system saves your changes and exits the setup program

*uhhhwhat??*

I was leaning on trying the "easy method" first, if that didn't work, restart and do the second method, but a heads up sure would be appreciated!

3. And Macmarauder, when you say zero out the drive, and Robroy when you say a clean install, does that mean "format the hard drive and reinstall windows?" or "delete windows and reinstall?" I'm thinking you mean "format, etc." making sure

Thanks, Liz

[murtu52]

blim, as you may know, i am no expert at this stuff, but i did have a few practice runs with a couple computers at home.

FAT32 is a type of format the the harddrive in formatted in. The current standard for XP is NTFS (stands for New Technology File System, or so i believe), however FAT32 is still used widely in older OSes as well as XP. So, basically, if/when you are reformatting your harddrive, FAT32 is most probably the file system you will format the drive in. Don't ask me about the technical stuff about whats different from FAT32 and NTFS, i'm not that smart .

[TheTerrorist_75]

Questions: (there will be a lot of 'em )

1.  The Possessed Gateway "came" with FAT32--supposed to be "good".  Is that something that happens automatically or do I do something after the Brain Transplant?

Win98 uses Fat32. It cannot not "read" NTFS.

2. Also (oh Terrorist!!!  Wasn't it you who recently dealt with a Possessed Gateway?) am leaning towards using Gateway's instructions--starting with the System Restore CD then Win98 CD.  The instructions conflict a bit. 

Yes I was the unfortunate one who performed an exorcism on a Gateway.

On one source, it looks like the System Restore CD "tells" the idiot box to boot to the CD on restart, looks fairly easy, yet another source (The "instructions" that came with the System Restore CD) says (and I quote):

Press F1 at startup to enter system setup utility

Set device boot order.

Use arrow keys to highlight the Boot Options menu item

Where the boot order is set within the Bios screen.

Press enter to select the Boot Options menu

This opens the "menu".

Highlight First Boot Device then press Enter

In the menu that appears, highlight CD-ROM then press enter

Highlight Second Boot Device then press Enter (at this point I'm getting lost)

In the menu that appears, highlight Floppy then press Enter

As you highlight each boot order a new menu opens where you select the device.

Highlight Third Boot Device then press Enter (really lost now--why?)

In the menu that appears highlight Hard Disk then press Enter

Same deal as above. When finihed the CD-Rom will be 1st., floppy 2nd. and hard drive 3rd. This is your boot order.

Press F10, then Enter

The system saves your changes and exits the setup program

*uhhhwhat??*

Once you have set the boot order you press the F10 key and a box will appear asking if you wish to save your settings and exit the Bios. Press the Y key for yes and press the Enter key. The computer will now be able to boot from the Win98 restore disk. Place the CD in the drive so you can proceed with the restoration. This is where my links will come in.

I was leaning on trying the "easy method" first, if that didn't work, restart and do the second method, but a heads up sure would be appreciated!

3. And Macmarauder, when you say zero out the drive, and Robroy when you say a clean install, does that mean "format the hard drive and reinstall windows?"  or "delete windows and reinstall?"  I'm thinking you mean "format, etc."  making sure

Yes formatting will wipe the drive. This can be done with the floppy bootdisk.

Thanks, Liz

[blim]

Thanks Terrorist for a great translation! One additional further translation needed?

"Yes formatting will wipe the drive. This can be done with the floppy bootdisk."

Wait, is this floppy bootdisk the Gateway System Restore CD, the Windows 98 CD, the Emergency Start Up "square disk" that we made today or something different???

And Macmarauder, that Geekstopandgo link is wonderful. The pictures really helped translate the printed stuff.

Murtu and Terrorist, thanks for clearing up the Fat 32 confusion--I remember reading about converting Fat 16 into Fat 32 somewhere, and I was afraid reinstalling would convert windows back to Fat 16 which would be "bad"--nice to know I shouldn't have to worry about that (right??)

More questions when I come up with 'em thanks, Liz

[macmarauder]

sorry about the confusion. i mixed my mac terminology with my windows terminology. fortunately these guys are very helpful.

[robroy]

The emergency floppy start disk you made may work. Turn the PG (possessed gateway ) off, put the floppy disk in the drive, then turn PG back on. The PG should boot up.

Try this and let us know what happens

[TheTerrorist_75]

I use Radified's WinME bootdisk for formatting. Take a floppy and put it in your drive then go to My Computer and right click on the A: drive. Select Format. Do a Quick format then download the WinME bootdosk file to the floppy disk.

Self-extracting WinME bootdisk (supports hard drives over 64GB)

[blim]

The emergency floppy start disk you made may work. Turn the PG (possessed gateway ) off, put the floppy disk in the drive, then turn PG back on. The PG should boot up.

Try this and let us know what happens

Hi Robroy,

With this do you mean to see if it works? I've been wanting to do this to make sure we made it right, but I've been chicken . Will it boot to just letters and numbers (DOS) or will it boot to windows? (if it works, that is) Any idea what it would do if we didn't make it right? And most importantly, how do I "get out of it" after I try it? Thanks,

Liz

[bearskin]

one more litte item here blim...when you do get this machine running again you may want to turn off that teatimer thing....I've read somewhere that win 9x doesn't like teatimer.

[blim]

Thanks, Bearskin,

So far Teatimer has worked on the PG--at least it alerted me when Mcafee was trying (unsuccessfully) to update. Somewhere I read to uninstall or disable all that virus-spyware stuff before reinstalling. When I reinstall the virus-spyware stuff (IF the reinstall 98 works, that is) I will not install Teatimer to be on the safe side!! Seeing as everything was fine after Spybot was installed, I think it was something I removed in Adaware that broke the internet, but not going to take any chances!!!

Liz

[thesidekickcat]

I know next to nothing about this stuff, but I was wondering if, since you think it was fine after Spybot, but might have been something Adaware took out, is there a recovery thing on Adaware? I know there is on Spybot.

Also have you checked your settings in both IE, and in your connection settings etc, to see if something got changed or unchecked, or even in trusted sites in antivirus?

Every now and then something will take out the check mark for my little connection monitors that show internet activity down by my clock. Just happened recently after a spybot scan for some reason.

And I have had windows update take out my dialup's settings. And also once something (I think an odd Google beta ad on old Leoville crashed my IE and my dialup settings that time).

So I was wondering if there was a repair possibility for IE, after finding out if something is unchecked or changed?

To see if you have to do fresh clean install in first place. Though it sounds like it might fix the longstanding problems.

Good luck with it all.

God bless everyone.

Edited May 6, 2005 by thesidekickcat

[tg1911]

...... is there a recovery thing on Adaware? I know there is on Spybot.

The only "restore" feature that I know of, in Ad-aware, is the Quarantine feature, which is what I use.

Instead of clicking Next, to have it fix the problems, click the Quarantine button.

I usually keep them in Quarantine for about 2 weeks.

If I don't have any problems, I delete them.

If you do have problems, you can restore them, scan again, then Quarantine the ones you know aren't required.

[blim]

Yes, quarantine would work great unless SON DELETES the quarantine file before seeing if the idiot box works right! ! Me thinks he won't do that again! He said, "Uhhh, doesn't 98 have a system restore?" as I slapped my forehead and sighed....I'm Dummybook educated and he took a college class in computers...geesh! Sometimes I think that boy took too many soccerballs in the head.

We tried fixing IE, reinstalling it, restoring it, all that stuff and nothing worked--not showing in Ad-Remove Programs anymore. And seeing as the PG almost never did work right, a fresh install hopefully will fix the kinks and gives an opportunity to get rid of a lot of junk we don't use anymore now that its the "backup". Besides, I've done all this homework! Although I must say, it doesn't freeze anymore!

Liz

[robroy]

Liz you say ie doesn't work so try typing a website address into windows explorer address bar then hit enter. Does that take yo to the webpage?

Hi Robroy,

With this do you mean to see if it works? I've been wanting to do this to make sure we made it right, but I've been chicken blink.gif . Will it boot to just letters and numbers (DOS) or will it boot to windows? (if it works, that is) Any idea what it would do if we didn't make it right? And most importantly, how do I "get out of it" after I try it? Thanks,

Liz

yes I did mean to see if it works

let us know what happens

[TheTerrorist_75]

Gateway uses a program called Go Back for restoring the PC. I'm not sure if it was used on the Win98 PCs but it may have.

[bar5]

Liz:

I can't help you at all on this, but did find a Tutorial for Gateway that you might want to take a look at for future use.

Gateway Tutorial

Look under Microsoft Windows, click on Windows 9X and take it from there. This tutorial has a lot of info that you might use later.

Have fun.

Barb

[blim]

Phew, after a busy week, the kids are out and I can catch up on things!!! Next week is "merely" soccer, band concert and prom, so I may have a little more time.

Regarding the Emergency Start Up Disks we made---how do I exit/end this program once it starts? (whether it works or not!)--as I have no idea what it will look like or how it behaves. I'm assuming it will look like a DOS program, right? Do I just shut down the PG and remove the disk, or remove the disk with it running or exit out of the program (and how)? I need an escape plan

Rummaging through the Gateway stuff, I discovered I also have a Universal Boot Disk made by Gateway--assuming that is the same thing, right? (another backup!)

Hi Terrorist, newer Gateway models have the go back program Missed that feature by about 6 months.

Robroy and all, When we first tried Internet Explorer, a box came up that said basically, "Oh, so sorry, IE encountered a problem and needs to close" and away it went--(at least the "newer" Illegal Operation Messages are less scary now ) . When Son was fiddling with options to fix IE with the same results, the last option he chose was to "restore IE", which brought us back to IE4(I think) and when we open it, we get "Illegal Operation and will shut down" box. When he tried to Install IE6 (downloaded on to a CD from the working Dell) the "Internet Explorer.....Wizard...Thing" encountered an error and needed to close--poof.

Mcafee has been giving a lot of Illegal Operation Boxes so I poked around there and found some "unusual" things--when checking the Firewall Log, it said,

"Bootstrap Protocol Client was trying to open port 68. Some ISP's use Bootstrap Protocol as a 'keep alive' mechanism. Suggested that routine attempts to access this port from a server at your ISP, you should add that address to your trusted sites list to guarantee your DSL modem is not disconnected. The source IP is a 'non routable IP', address 10.65.118.1", have no idea if it's Charter Internet's address.

1.) We have cable but not DSL--is this a dialer trojan (thank God for cable) or are both cable and DSL modems called DSL Modems?

2.) or is the Firewall blocking this port the source of these problems and should I open it? How?

Also multiple attempts from my internet address using NetBios Datagram attempting to open port 138. This has come up once in a while with the Dell's log, but this shows up in the PG's log alot.

Again, naughty or nice??

Or are both of these oddities the result of a broken IE? (that's what I'm leaning toward, but what do I know?!?)

Wondering if something in the adaware scan didn't play nice with the firewall--although I'm hesitant to uninstall the firewall...I think something got wonked in the registry....although if I plan to reinstall 98, I suppose it couldn't hurt, huh?

Confused yet? ?

Liz

[TheTerrorist_75]

Someone with networking experience will need to explain "Blackhole Servers" and "Bootstrap Protocol" to you. To my limited networking knowledge this deals with DNS and MAC address issues. As to NetBios I do not allow it because of security issues. I have all ports associated with NetBios blocked.

The Gateway Universal Boot Disk is the same as any other Win98 boot disk. I prefer using the Radified WinME boot disk (previously linked) to format the hard drive before reinstalling the OS. The WinME boot disk contains more CD-Rom drivers and allows formatting of hard drives greater than 64MB.

[blim]

Thanks, Terrorist,

Knowing that the Firewall is blocking Netbios already, I feel much better knowing its supposed to be blocked

I think Son made a copy of the disk you suggested, at least I see a floppy labeled "BT--ME" on the desk that wasn't there a few days ago! Glad to see he is reading things here and not just playing in the Arcade!

Liz

[robroy]

Liz, to exit the emergency start up disk just eject it then reboot.

What firewall are you using? how long were you using it before the trouble started with PG. How long have you been using MacAfee? Had you updated either before the problems?