h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Not only did I do this to my own computer, but the VXD situation was a lab problem for my A+ class. Deleting the offender and restoring doesn't work... you will then have to restore every single one after it. Depending on where it occurs in the list, it could be quite a chore. Your best option, then, is to reinstall WInbloze.

It is possible, I have found reference to it on MS support pages that win 98 will sometimes refuse to shut down if there is mapped network drives. MS says the only way around this is to dissconnect from the mapped drives before shutting down.

This solution did work for one of my customers, but hasn't worked at other sites I have tried it on. Its worth a try. Otherwise try Win ME (Millenium Edition) I have been running now for a month or so and seems more stable so far. Has even managed to get 2 devices working that I have had sitting around the house for years unable to find drivers for previous versions of windows. For a MS product... its ... OK. (can't believe I said that!)

Mez...

It's a driver for a UMAX scanner, and it's loaded in the system.ini

UMAX have issued an updated driver and it now works fine.

Well I could recommend that you use Linux or Solaris, and I would just everyone gets upset and says that I'm a militant Linux Fan, which i'm not Windows 2000 is just about the most stable OS Microsoft have ever come up with (with the exception of DOS 5), I have a quadrouple boot system running Windows 98 and 2000, Linux and BeOS and the one that gets used least is Windows 98, infact the only time it's ever used is to test apps that don't function under NT oh yes and for my dad to play Games on.

If your looking for a version of Linux try http://www.aquila-vision.co.uk or http://www.linuxemporium.co.uk and get a single CD copy of Mandrake 7.1/7.02 (7.1 if you can get it).

P.S avoid Corel Linux Like the Plague, and Corel WordPerfect for linux is crap use AbiWord instead http://www.abisource.com binaries are available for both Windows and Linux X-Windows.

About three weeks ago My Primary Boot PArtition (FAT32) started to collapse in a heap after a defrag from NT5 on the win98 patritoin crashed. this caused a nuber of system VXDs to fall into various holes in the file system and windows would not start claiming that the files were absent or corrupt, anyway I whipped out the windows 98 CD and expanded every sinle Cabinet file on it into a Directory under NT and then started deleting the damaged file and replacing them with fresh N.T.B.G. copies and windows started happily after i'd then removed the reference to a driver VXD for the USB Camers from my system.ini

the partition went steadily downhill after that and so I made a restore disk and delted the partition before reinstalling windows 98 in a new partition occupying and restoring the NT boot loaded.

but anyway I know that this method works and has worked many time on friends computers as well.

just what list of VXDs is the colonel refering to?

P.S I think I'll shut up now, if you disagree with what I know to work in practice, well.

Well, I'm so happy it worked out for you. But the average user does not require nor need to perform the tasks you did because:

1) Not just anyone should be poking around in the INI files.
2) Too often the VXD files are not included in the CAB files, but are contained on an installation disk for that particular peripheral.
3) The original VXDs can be superseded by newer versions during installations of various components, and by restoring the older ones, you can be setting yourself up for some difficulties.
4) The process of finding and replacing the VXDs with the known good versions can take much longer than a simple reinstall.

So your solution "can" work, but is unworkable in older systems that have been upgraded several times. And anyway, if you want to give PC advice, it's best to leave the condescension out of it: "How many of you guys are actualy experienced users?"

Relax...he's a kid showing off.

The rest of us (including you I bet) have a life...enjoy it!

ahsirtap

Go to http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/ and download the "Windows 98 Second Edition Mapped Drives Shutdown Update" from the 'Product Updates' link.

I'm not "just a kid showing off", i'm a kid rather pissed of by so called I.T proffesionals talking with conviction about things they realy don't understand.

i'm sorry I know i've sounded realy nasty in prior treads but it's something that bothers me.

sorry for anything, just please at least listen to my advice rather than rejecting it on the grounds that i'm just a teenager.

and yes I can see that the method doesn't work in all circumstances, had the camera VXD not been loaded from the system.ini then I would have been in trouble.

Thanks Dinsdale, I've done that and now it just refuses to shut down properly at all!!!!!! It's going to the doctors soon, that's if I don't drop kick it out of the study window first. A real case of 'Flying Windows'.

Remember to open the window first, it's not worth paying for a new one.
Okay everyone, answer me this: when I disconnect from the internet, my PC *sometimes* completely locks up and refuses to do anything at all until I reboot. Two questions: (a) why is it doing it, and (b) why doesn't it do it every time?

I would just like to verify as an American that it is just as stupid here as it is there, and probably just as stupid around the world
Probably about 90% of their users are not in the Pacific Time Zone, but they insist on setting it that way. It's all about the $$$$$ (well (pound sign goes here since keyboard lacking one))
-Paul (Detroit, MI, US)
(Disclaimer: I also run f**kmicrosoft.net)

if you want to prevent windows 9x from running scandisk after crashing/hanging during a shutdown, first reset the system, hidden, and readonly attributes,then edit the file called C:\msdos.sys and change the autoscan line to show AUTOSCAN=0.