missing device=c:\himem.sys ?

this morning (the computer was on all night) i tried going on line and bsod couldnt read data to drive c. restarted and scandisk quit half way thru. restarted and scandisk quit at 0. restarted in step-by-step mode shows config.sys is stuck. scanreg /restore shows no registry backups since friday night. shows 5 back ups all dated 12/7. ??? so i tried a backup but system either froze or it was taking too long. forced shut down. restarted safe command prompt scandisk - says add either (in command prompt only) device=a:\himem.sys or device=c:\himem.sys (which one do i add, how do i add it, ...). also how do i copy the system files from the a drive? is it system c: or sys c: ????

what's wrong with this system. i just reformatted and reinstalled this weekend. everything was humming along...
i'm at work now and i'm bringing home some info on dos commands.

 

What version of Windoze is it? Most versions of Windoze do not even need a config.sys file unless you have some older hardware that requires that drivers be loaded and system resources be set from there. If you can egt ot a C: prompt, just type in "edit C:\config.sys" and put an "REM" and a space in fron of the offending line and try to boot.

 

If you ran any operation from a "safe mode command prompt" and attempted to restart by entering "win" or "exit", you get the missing himem.sys error because it was never loaded into memory in that mode. You must restart from there using a "ctrl-alt-del"

If you are able to restart normally or in safe mode, use msconfig to troubleshoot and check to see that scanregistry is present and checked in the startup group.

 

i couldn't start in plain safe mode this morning. froze at the log on screen. so i may be stuck with command prompt only. look in config sys is DIR C:\CONFIG.SYS ? scanreg.exe - DIR C:\WINDOWS /P ?

i won't be home till afternoon.

a big question also remains: why did scandisk freeze? how to overcome incomplete scandisk? may need to use dos commands for this.

rockn - i probably DON'T need config.sys (windoze 98se), but i'll check in dos.

 

The dir command just finds files and folders it doesn't show what is in them. If you want to see your config.sys or autoexec.bat file from a command prompt use the edit command. Alt+F accesses the file save and exit menu.

You might try step by step confirmation to see where exactly the failure is occuring. It is possible your ram is damaged or not being recognized. This would result in himem.sys not loading or even a scandisk freeze.

Safe mode would skip config.sys and autoexec.bat, so I wouldn't expect it to be the problem. But starting in safe mode also forces a test of ram and can return xms memory error.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q109845

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q116253

If you want to do a sys c:, just boot with the startup disk and at the a:\> prompt enter:

sys c:

you will get a message that system files were transfered. This does not copy himem.sys however. To copy himem.sys from the startup disk enter from the a:\> prompt:

copy himem.sys c:\windows

 

rog - those dos commands worked. copied system files and himem.sys and was able to restart. config sys is full of nonsensical gibberish. how do i replace this file?

 

You can actually just delete it without ill effect. There may be some issues with SBlive or something else that requires it; I suspect it would just get recreated.

However you probably have a backup under another name such as config.old, config.bak, config.ago or config.pss (this last is created if you use the msconfig>create backup tab).

 

i will go ahead and delete config.sys. thanks again for your help.