Hi, I use an old Dell laptop running win95. i havnt updated the norton virus definition since 2000, because all the incoming files r from norton antivirus enabled PCs, so i feel very safe, plus those files getting too big for the 3.5" A-drive to handle. But recently i enabled the USB port and it runs perfectly with my flashdrive, so i decided to get the latest definition from Norton's site. I downloaded the "-x86.exe" intelligent updater, transferred it to the laptop n run it and it scaned through my setting n updated the files n went to reboot, n here came the problem. It wont boot up. the hard drive just keeps on spinning n the LED flashing, like in loops. so i boot to window95's step by step confirm mode, all loading ok until "load ALL windows drivers?" after i press "Y" it do the same harddrive-keepon-looping thing again. So, i just turned off n loaded it again in safe mode, it went through this time, with 2 pop-up alert, first said "DDEML.dll is an old version, needs to shut down n let windows to auto fix the problem," second is there r two .vxd are having problems, need to used the original window95 CD setup to reinstall them. So, i dug out my old window95 CD and let it run the setup in the safe mode, after it was done, shut down n reboot, and here came the BIGGER problem! IT CANT EVEN BOOT INTO SAFE MODE! so i boot the step-by-step confirm mode, n when it ask the "load all windows drivers?" n after pressed Y, a whole list around 10-15 .vxds are in "invalid serial number" and "damaged system.ini" and "cannot create a monolithic file." I can only boot into Dos prompt now. I think this is a multi-screwed up... first is the new updater, then is the re-install of win95, as i heard reinstalling win95 with explorer 4.0 is problematic, not to say i had ie5.0! but odd is when i was still able to boot in safe mode, i checked what files that had been modified by the updater through the "Find file" and didnt see the system.ini is changed, nor any .drv or .vxd" So... please... who can help me... :(

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Hi MacRoss.

Well I'm told you can do a Scanreg /restore in Win95 just the same as you 
can in Win98. Its been 10 years since I've used Win95 so I can't remember this detail. 
I was told this on another forum. Scanreg is on the Win95 CD in a cab file.

Bleeping Computer

So if your computer will only startup in DOS at the DOS prompt just type in Scanreg 
/restore and see what happens. If it works then you will be shown some dates of previous 
backups. Just choose a date before this problem occured.

This will restore the registry but it won't restore the system.ini. There is usually 
a backup of this in the Windows folder something like system.bak just rename it.

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I'm not saying this WON'T work, but I don't think you'll 
find SCANREG in your Win95 CAB files.  It seems to 
have first appeared in Win98.  You might be able to 
take the SCANREG.EXE file from a Win98 or WinME 
and run it on Win95, but if the structure for storing 
incremental backup registry versions wasn't in place 
before your system crashed, there's only going to be 
the one registry backup Win95 makes by default -- the 
two files 
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM.DA0
C:\WINDOWS\USER.DA0

You can rename these in DOS to
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM.DAT
C:\WINDOWS\USER.DAT

All these registry files have the "r-a-s-h" attributes set,
so you'll need to deal with that before you start 
renaming things.

Jerry


Jerry

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