Win 98 will not start up

[High Stakes]

My PC was fine until I moved it, I couldnt get win 98 up unless I was in safe mode. I couldnt use the CD drive in safe mode. I've tryed scandsk defrag and various other things includind the scan/restore thing offered up to one of the other mem. it keeps coming up restore failed. Now when I boot up I can get safe mode started but I cant get my desk top or any other programs up its just the c prompt over and over any idea's ??

[Spider]

Originally posted by High Stakes:
<STRONG>My PC was fine until I moved it, I couldnt get win 98 up unless
I was in safe mode. I couldnt use the CD drive in safe mode. I've tryed
scandsk defrag and various other things includind the scan/restore
thing offered up to one of the other mem. it keeps coming up restore
failed. Now when I boot up I can get safe mode started but I cant get
my desk top or any other programs up its just the c prompt over and
over any idea's ??</STRONG>

Hi High Stakes,

When you move a computer you want to treat it (the tower and the monitor)
like a cardboard box that is full of wine glasses. My guess is
('cause guessing is all I have right now) is it had a bump and something
inside became slightly detached. By the behavior you posted it sounds
like it's the IDE ribbon.

You're going to have to open up the tower and insure all plugs and ribbon
connections are firmly in place. Actually remove each connection and
reconnect them. So, your hard drive, CD-ROM, and where the IDE ribbon
connects to the motherboard (the primary IDE controller) is where you want
to focus your attention.

After those are reconnected insure all cards are snug in their slots especially
if the card has no retainer screw in place...if indeed there is no screw holding
a card in then get one and secure the card.

While you have the "hood up" get a vacuum and carefully suck all the dust out
without touching the vacuum nozzle to anything inside the computer. Make
sure the tower is unplugged from the power cable before you open it up and
another good thing to do is rub your hands all over the front of the tower after
you take the cover off. This releases static charges that can harm components
that are sensitive to electrical surges like home-carpet-static-zaps.

[High Stakes]

Spider, thanks for responding. I went through the tower and relanded all the ribon and power conn.Now on boot-up I can F-8 and get to the safe mode menu from safe mode #3 and enter it goes to a c prompt. Then I type win and it says I cant load in dos do I want to exit and blah blah it then goes through the same thing ie: not loading win98,if I entr f-8 during the boot I can get to the safe menu. Even from #4 it just gives the c prompt. Iv'e tryed to go to my A drive and load my start-up from my floppy but I cant seem to get into a start menu from there I dont know what to type or if my disk isnt any good......Hellllllppppp. any idea's even bad ones are better than... Thanks for any help you might give. High Stakes