Windows 98 Stuck in Safe Mode – Defrag errors out

Name: Mary Helen McEvoy

I have windows 98. My computer is genuine interx86 family 15 model 2 stepping 9 608.0mb ram. Fat 32 with more than 31.gb It will not come out of safe mode. I ran scan disk, etc and it says it has corrected errors, but still will not come out of safe mode. I recently bought a new sound card, inserted it and it worked for a while, but I was having conflicts with the mother board with that sound card. I couldn’t get it to work right, disable, etc. So I finally took the new sound card out. I tried removing programs, etc, even went into Device manager and deleted things relating to the sound card.. I don’t think I should have done that… Now device manager doesn’t show for com port, usb ports…When I try to de frag the hard drive it tells me I have errors that I must fix first. Can you help me? I didn’t have sound for a while, but I got that corrected.

When you say that defrag tells you that you have errors, is it talking about programs accessing the disk while the defragmenter is running, or is it talking about actual errors on your hard disk? Where your computer is most likely at least 7 years old, a hard drive failure is certainly not out of the question.

To check for this, you’ll want to run Scandisk again, but with a couple of flags. Luckily in this case you’re already in Safe Mode, so we won’t have to worry about booting there.

To start Scandisk:
Click Start->Programs->Accessories->Scandisk

Under Check Disk Options be sure to check the following:

• Automatically fix file system errors
• Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors

You can also simply run the command line version, in which case you’d click Start->Run and type Scandisk /fix .

It’s been forever since I’ve had to work on a Windows 98 machine, so forgive me if those instructions are a little off.

With any luck Scandisk will locate some bad sectors or whatnot on your drive, repair or move them, and you’ll be able to boot after this with little difficulty. I have a feeling that your hard drive is simply going out on you though, so I have my doubts. A new hard drive may be in your very near future. However, if your Safe Mode trap is due to the items that you removed from the Device Manager, then this could get a lot more tricky.

You mention that the soundcard had issues with your motherboard, but then later mention that the sound is now working. Were you able to get the soundcard that you bought functioning, or does your mother board have onboard sound that’s being used?

If the new soundcard is in the machine, then take it out. Try to boot with it removed and see what happens. IRQ conflicts are common on older machines and this may be what’s causing your computer to get stuck in Safe Mode. Your machine tries to initialize all the hardware and ends up with the conflict between the sound card and whatever else, so it reverts to safe mode so the problem can be fixed.

If that doesn’t work, then you may be forced to reinstall Windows. I’ve no way of knowing exactly what was removed from the device manager and as such couldn’t really explain how to get those items back up and running.

Do keep in mind that unless you do your reinstall of Windows without formatting the drive, all data on it would be lost. If you decide to go this route, you’ll definitely need to back up all of your data and be sure to locate any application CDs as the programs will need to be reinstalled.

You can, of course, take your computer to someone to be looked at. I always have a hard time recommending that with a machine so old as it is generally just not worth sinking any money into. You can buy a new Dell desktop that’s OK for most tasks for around $500. Assuming my suggestions above didn’t work, then you may consider just getting a new system. You can always hook up the old computer’s hard drive to the new machine and get your data off of it. Photos, music, documents, etc are all very easy to copy over if you know where they’re saved.

Anyway, if any of the suggestions do end up working for you then please come back and let us know which one did.