Need to try a Win98 repair install, but....

[Deacon Frost]

...it's not working. PC has problems and won't boot appropriately. Windows directories seem to be having the problem. Tech at my work was able to see some data and files on the hard drive so the HD is apparently not completely shot. He doesn't do this kind of thing and recommended I try a repair install so I can get my files off the old PC and on to new PC before completely reformatting the old one or trashing it.

I logged in and chose the PC bootup with MS DOS help...can't remember the exact wording but saw that suggestion on another forum.

I switched over to the D: drive, typed in setup, but got this message:

Please wait while setup intializes
Scanning system registry....
Cannot create a temporary directory.
If you have HPFS or NTFS installed on your hard drive,
You will need to create an MS-DOS boot partition to set up Windows.

What should I do? Thanks for any assistance.

[Idnew]

If this problem isn't over 5 days old did you try to restore your pc?

Boot to DOS c:/ prompt and type scanreg/restore and restore to a date before you had problems. Also try this scanreg/fix

When you switched to the D drive did you have your windows CD in?

[Deacon Frost]

It's over 5 days old unfortunately. I got "bad command or file name"
when trying both suggestions.

...and yes, I did have the WIN98 SE CD in the CD drive when I switched over to the D: drive.:(

[Idnew]

In Dos at the c prompt when you typed scanreg/fix you got a bad command???

At the DOS c prompt again type dir/p this should read what's on your HD. Click enter to go to the next page as the p is to pause it. Look and see if you see windows setup.exe on the c drive.

[Idnew]

Tapping on F8 as your booting will get you to DOS, choose the command prompt only. Think it's #6. Is that how you got into DOS?