oh you bad laptop...

[NJcow]

Well, got a tuffie,and not my laptop, just attempting to help fix it for someone .
IBM Thinkpad 770(I know, an antique..)is having boot problems, it locks at Windows 98 splash screen, the little bar along bottom moves but no disk action. CTRL ALT DEL only way out. Now, Ive tried f8, got to options, it freezes on everything except prompt for each file load and safemode command line only. In command line I have access to all files and folders. In prompt for each file, it hangs on Registry. Aha, could the registry be whacked? If so, any way to retrieve it? Also, at one point scandisk started and it hung at 33%, if that helps.
I also have a zip drive I plug in to pcmcia slot but the dos mode doesnt't recognize it so no way to get some needed files off.
I figure reformat is only way to fix problem, but I thought I'd ask anyways.
Thanx in advance.

 

[jrbarnett]

Hi,

There should be SYSTEM.BAK and USER.BAK files in the Windows directory - these were copies of the registry created at the last successful bootup. There should also be a SYSTEM.001 in the root of C: which was created on Windows first boot, but obviously it won't have details of installed software and should be considered a last resort.

Have you tried running scandisk from the command prompt (rather than as part of Windows bootup?) as you can let this finish and see any messages it shows.

I don't know of a PCMCIA zip drive, but it may be a SCSI one plugging into a PCMCIA scsi adapter. You should be able to get DOS PC Card drivers and run this as an external drive with the DOS Guest program, and copy the files off.
You will lose the long filenames, but renaming them shouldn't take too long.

John