Recently I added RAM to my 5783 Compaq Presario III, WIN 98 (from 128 to 384, the only max possible). I also had a second hard drive installed (40 gig). The original drive has 12 gig. The speed is 450 mhz. The computer was operating okay for about 2 months, until this week. The computer went into 'sleep mode' and would not start up when I lifted the mouse, so I shut it down by pressing the 'off' button. When I started it up again, the scan window came up, but never actually began the scan. Instead a message flickered across the screen that I had a 'FAT1 error' (that's all I got to read before the screen went black). At that time the computer restarted and it booted to the 'safe-mode' selection window, which I did (safe-mode). This time it took me to a black screen. Every time I tried to type in it would give me a 'Fail, Restart (can't remember the other one) options. When I tried to enter anything, it kept repeating. So, I shut it down, again. To try restarting the computer, I've shut it down (pressing the off button until it shuts down) several times to see if it will restart. No luck. The computer reaches the 'COMPAQ' screen, then all I see is the cursor blinking in the upper left hand side of the screen. When I try 'escape' I get a 'keyboard' beep. The only way to shut it down is to press the 'off' button.

HELP!

Windows ME should not need the config.sys file. Are you still able to start in safe mode? If so, go to start, run, type msconfig and hit enter, go to the startup tab and uncheck config.sys ---- I "think" that will work with ME, but I have no experience with ME.....thanks for the pm, but as I told you, I'm on vacation and probably won't be able to reply again.

My gut feeling is that your hard drive is dying.....so, if you need to save anything, you may not want to play around too much ask about slaving it to a GOOD HARD DRIVE in another computer to recover anything important.

OOPS, sorry about that......I saw ME mentioned, ---- however, I KNOW for a fact that 98 does not need the config sys file.......so, IF YOU CAN ACCESS safe mode, try what I mentioned above.........uncheck the config.sys file and probably the autoexec.bat file (if available) and try to restart.

Is your computer still starting in safe mode? If so, you can go to Start>Programs>Accesories and then run the Disk scan. That should repair the corrupted file. Windows ME also gives you the option to defrag your system after you've done the disk scan. I don't know about WIN 98.

You are probably right. The OS is Win 98 - not ME. (I failed to make that as obvious as I should have - I only mentioned the splash screen as Windows 98, mia culpa.)

Thanks for responding. Hopefully I will have it fixed before you return from your trip! In any case, enjoy!


LeLe

Thank you for answering my plea.
I tinkered with it last night and finally got it to give me an indicator as to what the problem is. It seems I have a missing or corrupt file:
C:\Windows\system\CPQIDECD.SYS
It reported:
"There is an error on Config.sys file on line 7."

I think I'm doomed.

I will check with Compaq to see if I can restore that particular file. If not, restore looms in the future for me. Not something I look forward to.

If you have any less drastic solutions, please send, asap!

Thanks, again.

LeLe

Dear Smeegle,
I was lucky enough to find a 'Start-up' disk I had made some years ago, and I could finally get to a system scan. It found errors in my c-drive, which were not repaired. I left it still doing a surface scan (all the other drives came out okay), so I don't have the final results.

I suspect that I will need to install the missing /corrupt file I mentioned in my first post. I do have the 'restore disks' that came with the puter, but I don't want to do a full restore since I will lose all I have saved in the puter (photos, etc).

Is it possible to extract only that single file, and install it? And, if it is possible, how do I do this safely?? (I am one of these puter users that needs 'step by step' guidance, complete with all the dots and commas. *G*)

Thank you for your kind answers!

LeLe

Check this out http://support.microsoft.com/kb/155053

Lele, when my computer had this problem I ended up having to do a system restore from the disks that came with it when I bought it. Hopefully your problem will not be as serious.
Also, I have a Windows ME and it gets really finicky if I should use the "off" button to shut it down.

It sounds like there is more than one corrupted file or portion on the hard drive. Is that correct?