ME Full reinstall needed

[mikesin]

My last post 'ME Unstable' did not find a solution and so I did a partial reinstall of ME using files on C: hard disk. This appears to have gone OK and I have now (1/2/2005) finished reinstalling MSoft ugrades to Win ME and IE. I appear to have a clean, efficient system that still crashes!!.

I still have the system freezes/crashes and BSODs that I detailed in my previous post.

I have now to consider a full reinstall of ME after a re-format of C:.

I have moved my applications to my D: drive and can backup Outlook express files etc onto D:

I have a recovery CD that appears to have MEOSCABS folder with the cabinet files on it but no instruction for use that I can find.

Some questions for the wise ones if I may.

What else do I need to back up before formatting C: and reinstall?

Should I copy existing cab files from hard drive to backup before starting?

How do I set about reinstall - what disks/utilities or other programs will I need to initiate the process ?

What else do I need to consider?

Any advice on the processs gratefully received.

[oink]

Yes, copy the cab files before format. Do try the restore disk, after copying the cab files first, just in case the restore disk doesn't work. The reason for using the restore disk is that if it came with one, it is obviously one of the name brand off the shelf jobs and tracking down drivers can be difficult. Do go into device manager and note exactly what hardware is listed there in case you are left chasing drivers. If the restore disk works properly, it will do the formating for you. To use it, you probably put it in the drive and reboot.

[mikesin]

I am in a bit of a no mans land with this one - my mesetup.exe exists on my C/programfiles/install/cabs but not on my recovery CD. I made a fresh winme startup diskette but when I try to follow the process for execing setup from the drive with the recovery cd I get bad command/file name - 'cos it doesn't exist.

How can I use the setup exec on the startup diskette without the program on the CD??
Is it really feasible to burn a CD from the cabs file on C: and then somehow get the startup diskette to accept this CD as the source? Will I have problems with msoft licences and similar stuff?

UGGH!

I

[oink]

Can you tell what make a model computer we are dealing with?

I'm not sure I unsterstand you correctly, but then I just got up. Did you try booting from the recovery cd itself (no floppy in drive). You may have to enter your bios to tell it to boot from the cdrom first.

If you burn the cab files to cd, you can use a boot floppy that has cdrom support, which you can download beforehand, to copy the files back to your newly partioned and formatted drive. You then run setup from there after booting from a floppy.

You will have problems with licenses if you don't have the cdkey for your Me. It is either on a Ms book that came with the computer or on sticker on the computer itself. If it can't be found try this: http://www.magicaljellybean.com/keyfinder.shtml

[mikesin]

Tks for replying and sorry about early start...


I have an IBM NetVista 600MHz machine AMD Duron 7 processor with 2 hard drives and 320MB memory.

I have flayed it with the IBM diag disk with max load tests and memory tests etc - no problems detected. I have performed a full C: surface scan (1.5hours) no bad data detected on disk.

I have rattled it , replugged memory chips, removed fan and cleaned out dust but it crashed again almost immediately it had finished rebooting - monitor went into mad pattern and keyboard did not allow Ctl/Alt/Del - power down/up was needed.


ME is preinstalled on the C drive but I have a CD marked IBM Product Recovery CD 2 - I have never had CD 1 to my knowledge.

CD 2 when explored has recovery/install/options/cab (and other folders such as Drivers) but nowhere does it have a mesetup.exe - I have used search to scan CD.

So I have a mesetup.exe on my hard disk in the preinstalled files but that will only use the /cabs on the hard disk not the cabs on the CD.

I do have the licence key on the side of the PC.

How can I reinstall ME from the CD since I do not appear to be able to make the CD the source of the re-install - I am also a bit worried that if I format C; the product recovery might object to not finding a previous version of Windows over which it can reinstall

Hope I am being clear and thanks again for taking a look at my problem.

Mike

[oink]

1) Burn the cab files to a cdrom.

2) If you haven't tried it yet. Enter your bios and set it to boot first fron the CDROM.

3) Put the recovery CD in the drive and reboot. See what options come up. If a restore is an option, go with it. If you do in fact need a Restore CD #1 we will have to try other options.(The recovery CDs are not designed to be run from setup.exe)

4) Let us know if that worked

Meanwhile, do go to device manager and note what the hardware is like sound and video etc.

[mikesin]

despite having performed fully recovery twice my system is still crashing and i am having difficulty posting becaue I keep getting 'IE had caused an error in kernel32.ddl - Ie will now close' .

What is going on? I have a basic system now - second drive disconnected and almost back to as shipped - only difference to PC from when new is additional 256MB memory in second slot and original CD drive removed and DVD and DVD RW installled but that was months ago. Have tried with 256MB in first slot and original memory removed - BSOD crash when starting up outlook - have tried with 256MB removed and running with 64MB, ME locked up whilst open/close outlook - I do not have much other software left to exercise machine I am now using laptop to post - main PC has just BSOD whilst running scandisk..
Any ideas anyone??

[oink]

I don't have any more ideas at the moment, other than try the original memory only.

[mikesin]

I am pretty much out of ideas too.....I have tried every way I can think of to isolate the problem but... I just do not understand why none of the PC diags can bring up any errors but even scandisk which is a pretty simple application would crash - on the diag disk there is a 'max load' routine that exercises the whole PC and I ran it for 10 mins twice without problems - I could be heading to the PC fixit shop....tks for reading the messages....


mike

[oink]

In msconfig/startup, try unchecking different stuff to see if it is possibly a sortware or driver issue.

[mikesin]

I have disabled as much unnecessary stuff as possible. This afternoon the system was continually locking up In desperation I went to the IBM PC support website and searched for driver updates against my machine/model/operating system - I found 4 driver updates that applied to my machine - two for VIA one for Connexant modem and one for Video Driver. I think I had installed these inthe past but presumably they get uninstalled when one does a full recovery..

I have installed the two VIA ones - one was difficult to install so I did it in safe mode.....the other installed in normal mode. I have installed the Connextant modem driver but not as yet the S3 video driver. So far since then the system has been stable - I had previously also uninstalled all Nice To Have software applications which I will put back on one at a time when I am convinced the system is settling down - I will update tomorrow... tks for the thought...
Mike

[mikesin]

Well, since installing VIA drivers it has been more stable and allowed me to do quite a bit of work. Overnight (unattended) it had a BSOD " VMM(01) 00012518 0E:0028:C0013518". Pressed enter and it recovered back to desktop. That was 3 hours ago and it is still running OK. I will not make any more changes for 48 hours to see how it behaves. If I get more problems I will apply the S3 Video driver update.

[mikesin]

I think I am almost there. I had a period on Saturday and Sunday when it went all wobbly again. During one of my many reboots (in safe mode) I realised that I had never had a poblem with bringing the PC back in safe mode. So I then followed the procedure in Microsoft Knowledge base 273738 and disabled win.ini from starting. Payday!. System came up and was stable for 24 hours. Examining win.ini I have two processes that are called. WPSHRC.EXE and Run= HP PSC2200.

So I disabled WPSHRC (which is for my Canon printer) and ran with just the HP machine. It has been very stable today. Just one bsod 0D:009F:0000006A.
So I have uninstalled the canon software and will wait and see. It has run with both before so perhaps it is a re-install sequence problem?

[mikesin]

I continued in my quest for a solution and slowly zeroed in on the problem. There were two problems, one large and one small.
Small one - desktop/properties/screensaver/setting had 'turn off monitor' after 10 minutes enabled - although I had disabled power scheme in control panel. This would cause the screen/keyboard/mouse to freeze and do other strange things.
Big problem - too many invalid/broken registry links. I stumbled across a piece of freeware called 'registry mechanic'. This identified 144 errors in my registry. Reg Mech would fix some but without purchasing a full function copy of the software the rest did not get resolved automatically.

So using the information that Reg Mech provided, I saved a copy of registry for backup purposes and then one by one navigated to the defective entries and deleted them.

I have now restored my PC to full function and reloaded all of the software I had to uninstall and for the last three days it has had the c**p beaten out of it without a complaint. One happy and satisfied ME user :wave:

[oink]

Nice to hear a happy ending, and you figured it out all by yourself. You should be trying to answer a few posted questions.