Hi,

I installed last week the newest version of CCleaner ( did not use it before) om my old Windows 98 SE system. After some reg cleaning the system boots until it has to startup Explorer.exe and than gives an error message and hangs.

In the my document dir I have several cc reg files to restore but I do not get the started because windows is not active. Also the regedit.exe seems not to be working without windows.

Any solution known?

Thanks in advance

Hans

Welcome to Piriform Hans.



So you save the backup files. Start your computer up and keep the Ctrl key pressed until you see the DOS menu and select Safe Mode. When the computer starts up in Safe Mode it will have 4 Safe Modes in each corner of the desktop and you will get a message your running it Safe Mode. Find your backup reg file, normally its in My Documents unless you saved it somewhere else. Just double-click on the reg file and it will ask Are you sure you want to add the information in filename.reg to the registry?. Click Yes and you will be told The information in filename.reg has successfully been entered in the registry. That will put back all the info the reg clean took from the registry.

Does Explorer.exe startup when your computer starts up? Mine does but thats just me, I have a short-cut in StartUp folder.

Can you decribe the exact error message?

Is the computer useable afterwards or does it lockup, hang so you can't use anything or restart?

Probably your easy solution is to do a Scanreg /restore in DOS. As your computer is startup up keep the Ctrl pressed until you see the DOS menu. Select number 5 Command Prompt Only. At the C:\ type in Scanreg /restore with a space inbetween. Scanreg will start and show you a list of previous dates. Select a date when everything last work ok and do a restore.

Now by default you have 5 backups of the registry, System.dat, User.dat, Sytem.ini and Win.ini files all stored in cab files in Windows\Sysbckup folder. Now you can change the number of backup files if you edit Windows\Scanreg.ini and change the number in

MaxBackupCopies=5

to what ever number you want too. But if you change it to 14 and in 14 days time you do a Scanreg /restore you would expect to see 14 different dates to choose from but you don't. You only see I thing 7 or 8 so I set my number to 7.

There are other ways to restore the registry but I won't confuse you any more. Just try the above options and let me know.

I've been using CCleaner for a couple of years and its NEVER causes me any problems.

You could also probably extract explorer.exe from the Windows 98 setup disk using a working computer, dump it onto a floppy and copy it into the Windows directory. If that works and your system starts normally you'll have to apply some security update that was issued for explorer.exe years ago.

There is a line in Windows\System.ini

[boot]
shell=Explorer.exe

is it there?

Either way you should still startup in Safe Mode then you could Run: Explorer.exe to see if it works. In Safe Mode you won't have access to a CD Rom drive so as Andavari says you need someone with an active computer that has a floppy drive. Explorer.exe is in Win98_45.cab. Or I could post Explorer.exe here for you.

This post here may also be somewhat interesting to you, it shows how to make a Win98 registry backup, and how to restore it in MS-DOS. Of course it doesn't help at all if you don't have the backup to begin with.

If in the future you wish to adopt it and don't want to make the batch files manually, you can download them pre-compiled as RegTools98 from here, I made them and used them for years when I was a Win98 user and they saved me many countless times.

Hi Keithuk,

It worked Thank you very much, I startedup and got the menu to dos ( not with the ctrl key but the F8 key) than restored the registry as you said and he worked again

The only thing I found out is that the 5 regfiles I had where from September 2006 !!!! so I have a few progams who still not work and all the printers has to be reinstalled but thats the risk...

just one question, can restore the reg files made by CCleaner now without risk?

Andavari, thanks as well after this shock and have repaired all this I will look to the info you send me as well

Thanks

PS: for the record ....there was no specific error message, just after I get the login menubox form my network name, what was accepted an other box came with "Error"on top and and buton for stop and view info, what gives that there was a problem with explorer.exe and a mem dump etc
closing the box nothing happend any more By ctrl alt del and the (empty) taskmanger i shutdown the system

Regards Hans

That RegTools98 I made is a save your butt small utility, and was at least one of the good things for having a DOS mode which I do totally miss for a quick and easy restoration of critical registry files. Just remember in order for it to work you have to use the registry backup file.

Well I don't know why your Ctrl key wouldn't work, it works on every Win98 and WinME system I've tried it on. Yes I know F8 works of you press it every second but you can miss it sometimes.



No I wouldn't use the 5 old reg files because they are a bit old now. Now you've doen a system restore you can use the Registry section again but this time save the current back file.

I will give you another tip for Win9x/ME. Download
RegClean 4.1a Build 7364.1, I've been using it for 10 years and its made by Microsoft. There are plenty of other places you can download it from just do a search for "RegClean 4.1". Its an excellent registry cleaner. RegClean works on the same principle, everything it removes it puts into a reg file in the app folder, so you just double-click this file to put everything back as it was before.