W98SE boot

[hsgibson]

Booting up windows 98SE: process goes all the way thru, to desktop, then one or more icons is white, system hangs. Then go thru scandisk, maybe up to 5 times, before it finally catches and all icons are OK and system is working. Have used config.sys, no apparent problem there, shows only explorer and systray.
Sometimes works the first time,sometimes takes many tries.
Advice??

 

[Rollin' Rog]

Hi, and welcome to the board.

When you say you have used "config.sys", do you mean msconfig, the system configuration utility?

In msconfig > startup, Explorer is not a file which is loaded. However, once the desktop loads and you do a ctrl-alt-del, you should see it, systray and other startup applications.

If you have not used msconfig to troubleshoot, or not used it thoroughly, read the "troubleshooting startup folder" section of the link below.

Run msconfig, click the startup tab and remove the checks for everything but scanregistry and systray. See if the problem still occurs, and selective re-enable items until you find the one causing the problem.

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q188/8/67.asp

What errors is scandisk reporting? Scandisk will normally run after a bad shutdown, but it doesn't do a "thorough" scan unless you run it independently. You should probably do that and have it "prompt for errors" rather than automatically fix, so you know what is going on.

 

[hsgibson]

Thanks to Rog for the help. I tried it, yes I meant to say msconfig, have many times used it, now it shows on systray and explorer. I also did the long, long comprehensive scandisk.
None of these helped. The computer still hangs on boot, sometimes, but not always. Any further ideas??/