Anyway to fix this WIN98 problem?

My friend just called and said that "something" happened to his PC and everytime he tries to boot up he gets a "you must reload Windows" message and then the screen says "It is safe to shut off your PC now".

I tried the basic stuff: told him to make sure that no CD's or disks were in the drives (there wasn't) and also tried booting into safe mode - he still got the same message. Does anyone have any other suggestions? Is everything just lost and Windows has to be reloaded? (By the way, it is Win98)

that sounds like the registry is corrupted.

as windows starts to load, immediately press f8.

you will be presented with a list of options, choose safe mode command prompt.

once the command prompt is there, issue this command:

scanreg

also try scanreg /restore, reboot. if not then scanreg /fix then reboot.

as a final resort, you could try reinstalling windows 98 on top of itself. start the installation but don't format beforehand. this might work but if it doesn't then you are looking at reinstalling fresh.

When the hard drive is full, Windows will also report a registry problem and when it tries to fix registry it can't because the disk is full..

He says nothing about the HDD being full as far as I can see...

Phantasm66, my friend has not been home today but we will try your suggestions as soon as he gets a chance. Thanks!

His friend doesn't seem to be a computer person (no offense), so I wouldn't be surprised if he wasn't familiar with the term "disk space" at all .

And that's my point:

Your HD gets full, maybe Windows crashes. Then you boot up and it says there is a problem with registry and it will fix it. Will ask you to reboot. And so on forever. Boot into Safe Mode, delete a few things, reboot and everything is OK.

Not a single word from Windows saying it was the lack of disk space to blame.