Please help

[Confuzzled]

I am posting for a friend of mine. Yesterday he had downloaded windows updates to his compaq computer. He has win98SE. After the updates and shutting down, now his computer will not reboot. He gets an error that these files are missing.

dfs.vxd
symtdi.vxd
cshook.vxd
vsdata95.vxd

I was thinking I could email him the missing files at work and he could save them to disc and he could install them thru DOS? Could you help me guide him through what to do? I have tried all I know and I came to a point I am clueless. Thanks in advance!

[Nick Grana]

M$ Updates Sometimes they are more trouble than they are worth.
Sometimes I had to go back to M$ update site and remove some updates.
Another way may help:
Either using a boot disk or tapping F8 on startup, (F8 brings up a boot menu. Choose number 6) get to the dos prompt c:
Now type scanreg/restore and choose yesterdays date or a previous one and let it restore an older registry. After this is done, reboot and see what happens.
If it works, tell him all this was you idea and he'll be indebted to you for life.
If it does not work, blame me.
This is where a good batch called cabrest comes in handy. Saved my butt many times.

[Idnew]

I agree Nick some of those updates just aren't worth it. The restore should fix it.

[Confuzzled]

Thank you both for your help. I have him on the phone now and....He did that and he gets a message that says:

For most of the dates he gets this error:

System restore operation failed
Then click OK
Then it goes back to c prompt.

For 11/5, the most recent one, he gets an error that says
1720-smart hard drive detects imminant failure.

Suggestions?

[Idnew]

Uh oh

Tell him to try this. Back to DOS type in scandisk/all/autofix/no save/no summary/surface It will take awhile. I just did this on my daugthers and it told me her hard drive ain't long for this world but it fixed what clusters it could.

[Confuzzled]

Hello, thank you!

Unfortuneatly, that didnt work either, it said:

ambiguous switch: /NO
and went back to the c promt.

Any other suggestions?

[mtbird]

Can your friend just boot into safe mode ? Tap F8>choose safe mode.

Two of those files are related to Norton, one is Zone Alarm, and the other is for Microsoft Networking.

[Confuzzled]

No he cant get in to safe mode. It tests himem, says OK and then cursor goes to the top and it locks up there.

THank you!

[Idnew]

At the c:/ prompt tell him to type dir and see if it reads c drive

[Confuzzled]

Yes it does