xms driver not installed

[Stecman]

My sister owns a dimension desktop (running Windows ME) and decided to start deleting files she thought she didn't need. Lo and behold she got into her system files and deleted a bunch of stuff in there . . . Today she called me because her computer was getting the error:

I/O subsystem driver failed to load. Either a file in the .IOSYS subdirectory is corrupt or the system is low on memory

I did a search on Dell's website and came across this fix:

http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/kb/en/document?dn=1066158&c=us&l=en&s=gen&cs (http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/kb/en/document?dn=1066158&c=us&l=en&s=gen&cs)=

I walked her through that process over the phone and it didn't help - in fact, I think it made things worse. Now she's getting the following error when she tries to boot from a boot disk:

xms driver not installed

She is fine completely reformatting her hard drive as she backed up her files on a CD's recently. But I don't know how to get around this error message to do so. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[Strider]

Hi Stecman,
There are a couple of ways of repairing ME. The best (IMHO) is to do a repair install with a real Windows ME install CD. That way she won't have to reinstall all her apps.
IIRC, Dell provides a 'restore' CD set, not a real Windows CD. If that's all she has, she can use the restore CDs to put the computer back exactly it was when she bought it.
With either method, she probably will have to boot from an emergency boot floppy disk. If she doesn't have one, I think she can make one by mashing F8 right after the computer beeps and selecting 'Help' from the menu. Or you can download a file from bootdisk.com that will create the boot floppy for her. When she boots with a floppy disk, be sure to select 'with CD-ROM support' so she can run setup or whatever executable is on the Dell restore CD. Also watch closely during the boot process because the CD-ROM drive will have a different letter from the one she's used to--probably one letter higher.
HTH,