I got a call from Dad today and asked if I would come over and fix his computer (again).
So I head over and it has the "Restore active desktop" in the background, a box pops up saying to reset the colors to 256 or higher and there is no mouse pointer.
I try to set the colors higher, but it won't stay taht way, I figure the mouse fried out and is throwing things off. So we head out and buy a new mouse... Still nothing, no pointer and all these boxes.
Also it goes through scan disk everytime you start it and a box also appears that says a "spool32" error
He is running win 98se on a compaq 1.2 machine.
Any suggestions, I am going back over there tomorrow.
Thanks in Advance
Posted by old paint (Member # 549) on :
reinstall windows...
Posted by Brian Crothers (Member # 2888) on :
There is a file called sfc.exe (system File checker) it's at c:\windows\system It checks for corrupt system files and prompts you to replace damaged ones from the 98 CD or hard drive location.
If no files are damaged then start in safe mode (hold down ctrl and alt while it is starting) check for duplicates in the system and stuff you know is wrong and delete them.
If you have it run Norton Win doctor and follow the prompts.
Last, you could try this: at safe dos command prompt, c:\windows\command type scanreg /restore choose date of restore you want
If you get it running okay I would tell him to NEVER turn the freaking thing off, schedule scandisk, defrag while he sleeps to run every day. Check your anti virus checker and have it run a a full check at nite too; every day. Then have it re-boot before he gets up so that the ram is nice and fresh with no weird partial instruction sets left. This way you won't have to go over and rescue the computer any more... hopefully... good luck
Posted by Mike Pipes (Member # 1573) on :
Yep, a fresh start (format and re-install) is probably in order.
My next guess would be a corrupted video driver because of the color settings being stuck, but because there's also problems with the print spooler, active desktop and the scandisk thing, I personally would jump right into re-formatting the drive and doing a clean install of windows which should take care of all that at once.
