help computer running windows 98 not loading!!!!

ok heres whats happening a friend of mine has a computer running windows 98 that was loading and working fine. then all of the sudden out of nowhere when it loads to the desktop i get the arrow with the hourglass. also the windows 98 taskbar also loads up. now the first time it did this i went into safemode and run and type in MSconfig snd unchecked all the progarm that load up on startup. Then shut it down and rebooted and everything load up fine. But now today its back to doing the samething again but the only difference is that this time. when i went into safemode and unchecked everything and rebooted. i got the samething again the arrow and the hourglass.

what could be the cause of this and how can i fix it? is it a sign that the harddrive is on its way out?


thank you
redice

 

Well i would assume that for your hourglass problems someone was simpley messing with the screen settings. Get into the menu for your screen and see if you can change it height/width or whatever the setting may be.

 

occhams razor, the simplest solution is the correct one.

before freaking out and replacing the hard drive, reinstalling the OS, or any of the other painful options to repair a problem like this, check to ensure that no one decided to change the normal select mouse pointer, should be in control panel/mouse/pointer, but I'm not 100% positive since it's been a while since I've worked extensively (or at all for that matter) with 98.

I've heard of viruses with similar effects to this, basically just thrown out on the web to annoy the piss out of people so the coder can sit at home giggling, so update his AV and run a scan, but to be honest I'd be shocked if he had actually managed to get a virus on 98, there aren't many viruses left on the web for anything other then 2000/XP.

 

ok i will check and see if it's any of those thing. is there somethings that i can try as well?

 

Go to Start > Run. Type "sfc /scannow" (without the quotes). Have the CD handy as it will ask for it. When it's finished, it will just close with no indications of what it's done. Re-boot into normal mode and see if that helped.

 

ok dolphin2 but are you saying that i should do this in safemode?

 

You can do it in normal or safe mode. Since the problem is in normal mode, it would make it easier to run in safe mode.

 

ok dolphin2 thanks and i will try it.

 

ok dolphin2thanks i did that did find somethings and fix them. i aso did a diskcleanup and a Disk Defragment along with that and all seens to running ok.


also thanks to all the rest as well.

 

Your welcome. Glad to have been of help.

Since it's running OK now in normal mode, you should run the System File Checker again. Run it in normal mode this time. After that all should be well.