Followup on my winME laptop

December 28, 2007

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 :-)

December 28, 2007

Re: Followup on my winME laptop

WinME-specific newsgroup:

http://news://msnews.microsoft.com/microsoft.public.windowsme.general

--

~Robear Dyer (PA Bear)

MS MVP-Windows (IE, OE, Security, Shell/User)

mm wrote:

> 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 :-)

December 28, 2007