Win ME wont boot

**Humbucker** · 23rd November 2003

Hi.
Trying to sort a mates pc.
The pc wont boot into windows.
If i put the system recovery floppy disk and cdrom disc in the 3 options are .
1. system restore to an earlier point. ( Dosent work, bad file)
2. this option reinstalls the operating system and drivers ( dont want to do this as there are files on the pc he needs)
3. command promt
Looking in C:\ I noticed quite a few of the files in there have been partley renamed with characters that are not on the keyboard.
Is there a way to rename the files or is there a utility to do this.

Thanks.

oE · 23rd November 2003

simple - me is shit put xp or 2k on !

the long files you see with the funny charicter on is a "till" key and is located next to the 1 key on the top row.

does the pc boot at all - whats the error / message etc you get.

oE.

**sniper** · 23rd November 2003

i thought the squiggle character (~) was a 'tilda' , its there because dos only recognises filenames of 8 characters long , so anything longer than this is shown as seen , my ~ is under my ENTER key on the alpha part of the k/bd with the #, its there somewhere on yours. if you go into dos you can change directories (if you know the commands, if not let me know i'll list a few) using the names as shown on your screen , you can then put the files you need on to floppy. don't know much about ME but try going into windows directory and type win see if it loads.

**Humbucker** · 24th November 2003

Hi.
Thanks for the replys
Windows wont load as that has a wrong file name
it looks like this [╫indows]
Thats in the root of c drive
The other files that have wrong file names are
config.bak
config.sys
autoexec
scandisk.log
autoexec.dos
they all have the first character like the one above wrong or the first character in the extension wrong

I presume it needs the correct file names to boot up.
When trying to boot I think it says somthing like disc error but cant be to shure,
I think its just down to the these funny characters and the drive is ok.
Could a virus have caused this?
Thanks.

**sniper** · 24th November 2003

i can only assume it is a virus but the disc error sounds ominus, can you run scandisk from the startup floppy , if you can type in the wierd character then you can rename the files in dos , type

rename presentfilename.xxx newfilename.xxx

on each one

**Humbucker** · 24th November 2003

Thanks Sniper for the reply again.
Going to get a Microsoft win ME boot disc.
Will try to do the scandisk.
Have renamed a few files already but have to rename using * as the faulty character.
Havent done the directories yet as need to read up on that.

Thanks again.

**Conkers** · 24th November 2003

Originally Posted by Humbucker

Thanks Sniper for the reply again.
Going to get a Microsoft win ME boot disc.

Use the fantastic www.bootdisk.com

**Humbucker** · 24th November 2003

Cheers for that pingobingo

**Humbucker** · 2nd December 2003

Hi all
Well this PC is doin my head in.
Its a Tiny PC.
I wiped the hard drive with Fujitsu disk utillity and loaded Windows Xp. It was ok for about 3 boots then wouldnt boot again so I wiped it all again and used the Tiny system restore CD which puts the Original ME operating system on and all the drivers.
Same again, boots OK a couple of times then this happened.
Error an I/O Subsystem Driver failed to load.
Either a file in the \iosubsys subdirectory is currupt or the system is low on memorry.

Tried a reboot then this

Invalid media type reading drive C
invalid system disk
Boot failure.

The Fujitsu Hard drive utillity says the Hard drive is ok.

Any ideas.

Thanks

oE · 2nd December 2003

Tiny PC's are shit - probably some fooked hardware - motherboard or ram.

oE.

**Humbucker** · 2nd December 2003

Running a test utility on ram.
Passed first test now doing a burn in test on ram

**pesty** · 2nd December 2003

re fujitsu hardrives tiny was one of the major buyers of the ****ed batch of fujitsu hds the controller chips made by cirrus logic on these 3000 series drives are faulty when they overheat bye bye.. can take a while for them to go i have replaced to date around 50 in the last 8 months at work....http://www.chipzilla.com/?article=6074

**sniper** · 2nd December 2003

good post pesty , guess that should sort it , i agree that tiny pc's are not the best , what cheeses me of is the 'restorer packs' ....should be 'too friggin lazy to give you your own driver cds that you ar legally entitled too packs'

**Humbucker** · 2nd December 2003

Chears for that.
Have done some reading on the suject and It looks like the Hard drive is the problem.
Now to find a 20gig hard drive and not a fujitsu.

Thanks all for the replys.