[Resolved] Only starts in safe mode

[Seth]

Nothing seemed to have happened and all of a sudden my computer only starts in safe mode.......... no error messages on startup or anything either. Im running Win98SE....... one thing ive noticed is that on the bootup for primary and secondary drives there is nothing there......... and in safe mode i have no cdrom or my cd writer available at all.......... is this just normal for safe mode??? i have power to the drives as they open and close......... and i know they are both plug and play as i put this machine together myself........ any clues out there???

thanks

Seth

 

[brianF]

Try this article from microsoft about bootsafe=1
HERE

 

[Rollin' Rog]

Have you tried restoring a previous registry? To do so, press and hold the ctrl key as soon as the computer begins booting. When the startup menu appears, choose the command prompt option. At the c:\> prompt enter:

scanreg /restore

use the arrow keys to select a prior started registry.

You may also need to see if this applies...

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q143283

 

[Mosaic1]

It is normal not to have CD access in Safe Mode.
the next time you are in Safe Mode, go into Device Manager and look for Device Conflicts and any kind of Exclamation points of red x's in front of devices.




I doubt this next solution applies. However, look for Wnbootng.sts in the Windows Folder. If you find it, delete it. Boot to windows.

 

[Seth]

okay....... i restored all registry and nothing....... i have also tried now scanreg/fix....... and i get a message telling me i dont have any extended memery driver. i have no idea what that means

and when i startup with command prompt only w/o safe mode i finally get an error: " could not allocate code/patch RAM below 4mbyte boundry. try to load SBEINIT.com before SMARTDRV.exe or minimizing VDISK.RAM. Creative SB16 emulation driver not loading"

in device manager, i had no conflicts or yellow explanation points, everything was fine......... but i did however cease all acceleration on the video card......... and then deleted the video and sound cards from the device manager......... could this be the reason im getting this message now??

 

[Bryan]

Just a hunch, startup in SafeMode and then do this and see what happens.

Click on Start>Run, key in msconfig and press enter. Select "Selective Startup" and then Un-check "Process Autoexec.bat" and "Process Config.sys". Click on Apply and follow the prompts to restart. If does startup in Normal mode, try a few restarts to be sure it stays there.

Let us know what happens.

 

[Seth]

Bryan is the man!! What a pro.........started up in normal mode now....... im gonna go copy all of my files and prepare for the reformat if this happens again. Thanks man.

 

[Bryan]

If you want to post the contents of your Autoexec.bat and Config.sys file, we can probably help you comment out the problem lines.

Start>Run, key in sysedit and press enter. Locate each file name in the blue title bar and click on the title bar to bring each to the forefront. Then just copy/paste their contents to a reply here.

 

[SavvyLady]

had a very similiar experience yesterday... ended up doing a system restore twice before I got it back to normal... along with trying to restore sound drivers....
Haven't a clue as to what the heck happened.

 

[Seth]

rem
rem *** DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE! ***
rem
rem This file was created by the System Configuration Utility as
rem a placeholder for your AUTOEXEC.BAT file. Your actual
rem AUTOEXEC.BAT file has been saved under the name AUTOEXEC.TSH.
rem



rem *** DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE! ***
rem
rem This file was created by the System Configuration Utility as
rem a placeholder for your CONFIG.SYS. Your actual CONFIG.SYS
rem file has been saved under the name CONFIG.TSH.
rem


i located the folders where it says the information is stored, but they seem to be those types of folders that when u open them, u get that pop=up asking what program u want to open it with. And it seems that it was only these 2 in the sysedit that had relocated information....... all the INI files seemed to be there.

 

[Rollin' Rog]

Those are the "placeholders" created by msconfig for troubleshooting.

As the note says, your real ones now have a .tsh extension -- and so it's those which need to be copy/pasted

An easy way of finding them would be to go to start and run:

notepad /autoexec.tsh

notepad /config.tsh

 

[Seth]

DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\HIMEM.SYS
DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\setver.exe
DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\EMM386.EXE
DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\RAMDRIVE.SYS 8000 512 /E

rem - By Windows 98 Network - C:\WINDOWS\net initialize
ban /nc
ndisban
redirall
rem - By Windows 98 Network - C:\WINDOWS\net start
arswait
z:login
SET BLASTER=A240 I10 D3 H7 P330 T6
SET CTSYN=C:\WINDOWS
C:\PROGRA~1\CREATIVE\SBLIVE\DOSDRV\SBEINIT.COM

 

[Rollin' Rog]

You might want to wait for Bryan's advice on this if he's still looking in on this, but for starters I would remove the following entries:

rem - By Windows 98 Network - C:\WINDOWS\net initialize
ban /nc
ndisban
redirall
rem - By Windows 98 Network - C:\WINDOWS\net start
arswait

These appear to be a legacy of an old Novell install, perhaps win3.1 vintage.

In addition I would comment this line, thusly:

;DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\RAMDRIVE.SYS 8000 512 /E

can't see any reason to be loading a ram drive here...

The actual problem involves loading of the sblive dosemulation drivers; but hopefully these corrections to the file will allow it.

 

[Bryan]

Follow Rog's advice and remove or comment out those lines from the .tsh files. Then go back to Msconfig and reselect the processing of those two files and restart Windows to see if it boots clean. If not, then there's a problem with the SB DOS emulation drivers. Let us know what you find.

 

[Seth]

okay..... i hope comment out just meant to delete those entries from the actual notepad file and note some other version of the file....... well i did that, and rechecked those 2 boxes that bryan asked and it started up fine........ if u guys can help me just solve this problem that ive had for a while now on startup i wont have to reformat at all.

i get an error in the system INI files called VVINESD.386, and asks me to push any key then the machine will finish loading and boot up, has done this every time for a while now........ any solutions on this one??

and thanks again by the way, u guys are great!!