From:    "K. Karl Kuller" <[log in to unmask]>
 Subject: Stuck in Win 95B OSR2 Loop

Hello All:

I had this problem a while back.  I had OSR2B running perfectly fine with an
installation of IE 4.0.  My first mistake was to download IE 4. Service Pack 1
from MS; my second mistake was to install it.  It ran for a whle, then the
next time I tried to install some software or change some system settings; it
crashed and burned my entire Win 95 installation.  I got the same cryptic
messages and could not get past the Dos prompt.  I am not sure but I believe
that windows messaging was the culprit.  I had installed a complete
installation of IE 4.0 and the same with SP 1.

I did not want to delete the windows tree because of the extensive software I
had installed on the machine and I did not want to lose all the icons and
programss on the start menu.

My goal was to try and salvage the corrupt windows installation by overwriting
it with a working windows installation from another drive.  The alternative to
that if it does not work is to rename the windows directory containing the
corrupted installation to a new arbitrary name and then reinstall windows; and
then overwirte the corrupt windows installation with the new "clean" windows
installation; rename the new windows directory to an arbitrary name, rename
the old windows directory that has hopefully been resuscitated back to the
name "windows"; and reboot and see if Win 95 comes up clean.

If neither of those works, then the only choice is to delete the entire
Windows tree with the command deltree.exe and reinstall windows 95; and
reinstall all the software.  This is the least desirable approach as it
involves lots of reinstallation of software that you probably installed
several years ago and misplaced the disks, etc. and you need to reset al the
defaults etc. etc.

FIRST ATTEMPT TO FIX THE PROBLEM:
My fix was to do the following, and you have to follow these steps pretty
carefully:

1.      Take another drive I had with an operating OSR2B system on it; (no IE 4.0);
2.      Install it as the master;
3.      Make my original drive wth all its software the slave;
4.      Reboot with a floppy "startup disk" and use FDISK to make the first drive
the one with the active partition so it will boot,;
5.      Reboot into windows 95 and do the xcopy "richkey" routine on it; to
transfer all the windows and root directory files from the master to the slave
and hopefully overwrite the entire windows-internet explorer FUBAR
installation on the original now slave drive.
6.      The exact command syntax is:
        and this has to be done from the choice Run on the Start menu NOT from the
dos prompt:

        XCOPY C:\ D:\ /R /I /C /H /K /E /Y
6.      Then I reversed the drives; and hopefully the system will be resuscitated
and reboot.

This only works if you have:
1.      Another drive that you can instlall Win 95 on; and
2.      A boot floppy (system boot disk).  If you were unfortunate enough to have
skipped that step as being too tedious; then your task is a little tougher.

IF THE PRECEDING DOES NOT WORK OR YOU DON'T HAVE A SPARE DRIVE WITH WINDOWS 95
OSR2B ON IT, THEN YOU CAN TRY THE FOLLOWING:

There is another way to do it, but you need to either have a good shell
program like Xtree or XTGold or be pretty good with command prompts.

The next stage involves setting up a new version of windows in another
directory and then overwriting the old windows directory with all the
information from the new windows directory and installation.

What you do is this:

1.  Boot to a Dos prompt, which is what you are getting but in case you don't
hit the F8 key and pick command prompt.  You want to make sure that your CDRom
works because you are going to need to install Windows 95 from your CDRom
again.

2.      Rename the Windows directory to a new name such as Windows.old;

3.      Reinstall Windows 95 to a new directory, the one you just named above will
come up, ignore it and use the name Windows.

4.      Finish your installation; of course making a startup disk.  When you are
happy with the way Win95 looks, execute the following command, from the choice
Run on the start menu:

XCOPY C:\WINDOWS\*.* C:\WINDOWS.OLD /R /I /C /H /K /E /Y

What you are doing here is transferring your new settings from the windows
installation you just did back to the old screwed up one.

5.      Reboot to a command prompt; rename the windows directory you just created
windows.new:
REN WINDOWS WINDOWS.NEW
and rename the old and hopefully resusciated FUBAR windows installation to
windows:
REN WINDOWS.OLD WINDOWS

6.      Reboot and see what comes up.

5.      This may or may not resuscitate your windows 95 installation.

AS YOU MIGHT HAVE REALIZED BY NOW, THE ABOVE WILL TAKE LOTS OF TIME, TIME TO
BE EXPENDED IF YOU ARE TRYING TO AVOID REINSTALLING TONS OF SOFTWARE.  IF YOU
DON'T HAVE THE TIME TO MONKEY WITH IT OR YOU DON'T MIND REINSTALLING THE
SOFTWARE, THEN YOU CAN DO THE FOLLOWING:

ALTERNATIVE NUMBER THREE OR THE "TERMINATOR".

1.      This assumes that you are at a dos prompt; so if you are not at one, get to
one during the boot process by using F8 to select command prompt.

2.      Copy the command file "deltree.exe" from the windows\command subdirectory
to the root directory by using either Xtree or XTGold or the command line
prompt as follows:
XCOPY C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\DELTREE.EXE C:\

                Then verify that it happpened by executing the command DIR C:\deltree.exe

                You should get a little directory readout indicating that you now have
deltree.exe in the root directory.

                You might be wondering why not just execute it from the windows\command
subdirectory?  You could, but then if something happened and you needed to
reboot and the windows directory was not completely wiped out and you had to
repeat this process you wouldn't have deltree.exe would you?

3.      Now execute the command deltree.exe c:\windows and say yes to the questions
prompt "Do you want to delete the directory tree c:\windows?  y/n"  This will
tend to wipe out the entire windows directory structure including all its
subfolders or subdirectories.

4.      Once you have wiped out the offending windows directory and its entire tree
including the corrupted internet explorer 4.0 with Service Pack 1 (No thanks);
you get to reinstall windows.

IN SUMMARY, you might think this is a little long winded or time consuming.
Well, in the past year or so and I have had to do all three (on different
machines)  My personal machine I had to do number one on.  Recently I had to
do number two on it.  On a customer's machine that was totally corrupt, I had
to do number three on it.  It seems that the customer's child had installed
some game software with all kinds of Direct X drivers, which tended to corrupt
the video drivers completely and completely corrupt the windows system.  I
went around and around with that one, because the power supply went bad, took
the memory with it, and on the way, corrupted the entire windows system.

My best advice is to stay away from Internet Explorer 4.0 if at all possible
and whatever you do, do not ever install a service pack for it.

If the guys in the government with their thousands and thousands of windows 95
installations had to do what I detailed above, then the Justice Department has
really good reason to go after Microsoft, at the very least because of the
thousands and thousands of man hours wasted installing, reinstalling,
debugging and uncrashing windows 95 that would have followed if any of the
government machines had the above problem.

A day does not go by that I have to run "Regclean" at least four or five times
to clear up errors in the Registry.  I also run Nuts and Bolts Registry Wizard
several times a week.  I find when I clean out about 50 to 500 orphan entries,
the machine boots up really smartly.  Windows 95 is so buggy, I installed a
set of Windows for Workgroups 3.11 I have just to see what a bug free system
looks like, compared to Windows 95.  I never spent this kind of time on
Windows 3.11 and Dos 6.22.  I suspect it is because the source code is not
available and the people writing the programs have found how to bypass Windows
to go to the Dos behind it.  Corel is one of the worse offenders in this
regard.  WordPerfect simulates that it is using the windows print spooler, but
I suspect that it is still printing to the Dos Prn call.  WordPerfect always
did like to take over the printer.

Anyway I digress into my many pet peeves, I hope my advice is more than
worthless.

Robert B. Hemming
Windows 95 wizard


<<     After my IE 4.01 with SP1 crashed in my Win 95B OSR2
 system on my main computer, it took my Win 95B with it.  I
 Have re-installed Win 95B OSR2 but, because IE 4.01 is so
 intimately tied in with Win 95B, I cannot load Windows and
 get the message: "Error loading Explorer.Exe, You must
 re-install Windows".>>

Been there and done that

<<     Since I cannot load Windows, I cannot uninstall IE 4.01,
 nor can I install over it from my Microsoft IE 4.01 CD-ROM,
 which I bought specifically for re-installation in case of a
 crash, but which cannot be installed through DOS!  I am
 stuck in a loop.>>

First big mistake, installing IE 4.01.

  >>

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