Boot Problem

Well, folks, here I am with another problem......

On a HP Pavilion with 98se, I had the pleasure of having a step-daughter mess it up somehow. When it begins to boot 98, I get :"C:\WINDOWS.000\system\VMM32.vxd:Missing/unable to load"

Can someone help?

 

Check out this microsoft link, it may help.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;en-us;q194679

 

Thanks Huon! If I reinstall Windows with CD Rom support without wiping the system, will it deleat all my files, or will windows repair the missing file? The page you sent me to says that if the file cannot be found with the commands they suggested, I "must reinstall windows". Does this mean I have to nuke the thing and start over and lose all data?

 

You can do a reinstall without losing your files, unless you do a format, which should not be necessary in this case.
Can you access your CD-Rom?. If you can start your W98 disk, it is a simple process. If you can't, you will need to use a boot disk, with cdrom support to reinstall.

 

Thanks, Huon! I went ahead and installed another hard drive, reformatted that, and now the thing still doesn't want to boot correctly. If I go through set up and ghange things around a bit, and then reset default config. it will go ahead and boot to windows....sometimes! If I turn the thing off, it usually won't boot upon restart (manually). Instead, it will display "Operating System Not Found". I have tried changing boot order. Any ideas?

This is a HP Pavilion 3266

 

Hi---- I think you may need to set your drives up with jumpers....if you have, please take a minute to check them, and all the tips I give, OK? We very often get questions about drives and not booting...so, bear with all the info, and do check inside- very easy to get something wrong.

Following: Most common configuration of drives.
1. What drive are you trying to "boot"? That drive must be the Master Primary IDE device, and contain Windows. It also shoud be jumpered as the Master on the Primary IDE channel of the motherboard (they are labelled). EXCEPTION: Some brands of hard drives, must be jumpered as a SINGLE drive- the diagrams are on the drive label. If there is another drive or CD drive on the same channel and cable....they would be SLAVE and the main hard drive is Master.
2. If using the newer 80-wire IDE cables with one blue connector at the end, that must go down onto the motherboard.
3. The CDR or CDRW drive should be set as a Master on the 2ndary IDE port and so jumpered.
3. You can leave the old messed up drive as is and set it as a SLAVE, with jumpers, and pull files from it.
4. You need to visit the BIOS, to make sure they auto detect correctly, they usually will, but not if jumpered wrong.
5. For the new drive- is it set up as one large partition? Did it configure correctly, with almost the same size in Megabytes that it is supposed to be? The drive formatted OK? Installing Windows onto it should make it bootable. Your old drive, if put in as a Slave, will become D: and the CD drive should move one letter ahead, unless you divided the drive into more partitions....in which case, each one needs to be formatted as you did before installing Windows to C:, that is, each other drive or partition on the new hard drive must be formatted, even if empty for now. Hope this helps----hope I did this right, and didnt skip anything too important. Hey, it's Friday....