Problem with startup disk

Hodden · #1 September 14th, 2003, 08:40 PM

I've been unable to properly boot up my Sony laptop or even to get it into Safe mode (I receive an error that says that Explorer is causing an error in the shell.dll). I can't seem to find my original startup disk, but I obtained one from a friend that also has Windows ME and off the www.bootdisk.com website.

The utilities off of these two startup disks have allowed me to check the computer for problems (scandisk reports no errors and restoring an earlier version of registry seems to do no good either). I'm now thinking that my best bet is to try and use Sony system restore CDs to just start over again.

But the problem is that my startup disks do not recognize my CD drive (a TDK CDRW external CD drive attached via teh IEEE 1394 port on the Sony). Without a functioning CD drive I'm not going to be able to reinstall anything.

Any advice????

jdc2000 · #2 September 17th, 2003, 01:32 AM

The CD-ROM drive you have is not probably bootable and there are no DOS drivers for it. If your laptop is a recent Vaio with the hard drive in an easily removable bay, you could take the hard drive out of it and put it into a desktop PC (with an adapter) and transfer the contents of the restore CD onto it.