Windows ME - I know, I KNOW!

[.Mark]

Having a look at a PC for a friend who runs this pile of junk. It boots to desktop but no icons come up, the mouse just sits there and when I do CTL+ALT+DEL it shows only explorer running.
On top of that, I tried to re-install it from the CD but it gets partway through the process then hangs.
If I boot from a Boot disk (floppy) I can log on to E: (it has CD-RW and DVD so there is F: too) it will do a 'dir' but whenever i try to copy files it comes up with a read error on the source drive!
Any ideas? Have thought about formating C: from A: and trying again, but the issue of it not reading consistently from E: worries me.

[plotloss]

scanreg /fix

Matt.

[.Mark]

Nice try Matt. It ran and did some stuff, but still the same problem.
The machine came with one of those 'Recovery' CD's but when you boot from it it comes up with 'Error Reading Drive E' Abort, retry, fail.

[CarZee]

will it boot properly in Safe mode?

[nicholasblair]

Sounds like you are missing a driver for your Cdrom.

[plotloss]

Is the media you are installing from knackered?

Matt.

[CarZee]

doubt it's a driver issue, but some of the CD drivers for MSCDEX are pretty dodgy with CDR/RW discs.

What it could be is a knackered CD or Hard disk.. especially if they're both on the same IDE bus. If either device is faulty and is causing bus resets, you'd get this problem.

If you can get the drives on seperate IDE buses you might sort the problem.

Also, run a scandisk on the HDD.. see what that throws up.

[Psychobert]

Had a similar problem a while ago, bought a new 80Gig disk to replace the old one then discovered the cable was the faulty part

Could be either piece of hardware or the cable. Mine would copy small files while installing things, 98SE went on fine but ME always threw a wobbly..

Now have more storage on my home PC than the server has at work.. Oh well..

[.Mark]

CarZee said: will it boot properly in Safe mode?

No mate. Does exactly the same as a normal boot. I'll go and check out which IDE it is on.

[.Mark]

Sorted! Thanks chaps.
Scandisk didn't find anything, but unplugging the DVD-ROM and using the recovery CD on the CD-RW seemed to do the trick!
Top work as usual guys!

[neil_cardiff]

Go to Start and then Run

Then type CMD

then type

FORMAT C:

say yes when asked

Then insert any other OS disk and Bobs yer lazy builder uncle. :P

[.Mark]

Was sorely tempted!

Never used ME before - really is crap isn't it?

[kevinday]

Have you reconnected the DVD-ROM and if so does it still work?

I had a problem once where the motherboard was incapable of running two CD/DVD devices, despite it clearly stating the ability in the book. Solution was a new motherboard.

[.Mark]

Yep, I reconnected it straight after. I know it works because I reloaded al lthe software from it.
Cheers.