What's the easiest way to reinstall Win 98? (1 Viewer)

[Alf S]

Due to ongoing DDHELP WIN DLL errors whenever I surf certain sites like Ebay and Yahoo Mail, I've come to the conclusion from reading online that I need to reinstall WIndows 98.

Problem is I'm not very PC savy at all and every "how to" article I read online has a different way to do it.

Can someone please give me a plain english step by step on the process it takes to just reinstall (not reformat or anything heavy duty like that) Win 98? (Or offer up a reliable website telling how to do this)

Note: Should I be backing up all the programs I have loaded, emails, favorites, files, or will a "simple" reinstall be safe enough not to have to worry about that stuff?

I do have the Windows 98 disk as well as my original computer vendors "restore" disk.

All help is appreciated.

 

[John_Berger]

You can do one of two things:
(A) Reinstall Windows 98 on top of your existing configuration. This **might** repair the corrupted DLLS unless those DLLs are due to another application and are not a part of the standard Windows fare.
(B) Backup, format, and reinstall onto a clean drive.
I am a large proponent of doing (B) on a regular basis. At least once a year, all of my PCs get rebuilt whether they need it or not so that any DLL corruption that it starting can be immediately stopped. (You'd be amazed how much software you realize that you *don't* use when you do that as well!)
The safest bet is to buy a new hard drive, install Windows 98 on it, add all of the necessary drivers, then reconnect your old drive as a slave and make it your D: drive. I say this for several reasons.
The biggest benefit is that you have a newer drive under a new warranty as well as much faster speed. (Just due to technological advancements inherent to hard drive communications, all modern hard drives are faster than older ones, even at the same RPM.)
The other benefit is that your original drive and data will be untouched. You won't need to back anything up because you're not going to change your original drive. You can even leave the data there -- there is no *need* to transfer it back to the C: drive.
And of course you now just increased your storage space.
This will also give you the opportunity to play around with operating system and driver installation. This is something that I feel every computer user must need to know just because of situations like this. Windows also is inherently corruptible, and unfortunately corruption of system files WILL cascade into other components of the subsystem. Trust me on that.
You're asking for step-by-step instructions. Without knowing exactly what the problem is (DLLs can act up for numerous reasons) or how you want to attack the problem, no one here can give you step-by-step instructions because there are numerous ways to address it.
Tell us what you prefer to do and we can progress from there.

 

[brentl]

Start by trying to load 98 over the old version.

put you Win98 disc in an shut down the opening screen when it pops up
explore the disc, on the first page you'll see a file that says startup .... double click and away you go.



Brent

 

[Alf S]

Thanks for the quick responses guys...

Brent can you please clarify, I'm not understanding your steps?

Do I put the disc in, then shut down, then restart??

 

[Andre F]

I vote for a fresh install from the CD. Boot to the CD and then answer a few questions and you will get to the wizard eventually. Back up everything, including data files, drivers etc. I do this around once a year for my home PC's and about every twice yearly for development machines.

 

[brentl]

Sorry ALf;
1. with the computer running put in your win98 disc.
2. the cd will start by itself and will give you different option ... like add/remove programs ETC ... close it off.
3. click on my computer ... right click on the win98 icon(should be you CDrom drive.
3. left click on EXPLORE.
4. it should show you a few files from the win98 CDrom, one should be SETUP.
5. double click on the icon and it should go to the "install win98 screen.
6. follow the commands
and AWAAAAy we go
Brent

 

[John_Berger]

Alf, upgrade your video drivers before you do anything. Are you running a Matrox Millennium II video card by any chance?
Also,you should look at this link before you do anything else:
http://www.generation.net/~hleboeuf/ddhelp.htm

 

[Alf S]

Thanks again guys..now it makes sense.

As for my video drivers, it has some generic OEM card and I did attempt to update the drivers I could find using the WIndows "update drivers" button, and they all said they were current. Even when I went to Windows update, it said all drivers were current.

John..thanks for the link. That was one of the first sites I found that seemed to match my error, but when I read it, it was dealing with a Jurrasic Park video game error, and the fix involved the actual game disc itself.

I did talk to one of the computer gurus here at work and he thought that MAYBE I had some spyware, and to download Ad Aware, which I did, and I found tons of it on my pc after a complete scan. Needless to say I deleted it all. I was able to surf ok last night, but only time will tell.

Alfer

 

[John_Berger]

Ad-Aware is EVERYONE friend -- unless you're a software developer who likes to infect someone's PC with adware/spyware/malware/scumware ... but that's a whole other thread.
Don't trust Microsoft for updates. That only works if (A) they have the newest drivers and (B) they accurately identify the drivers. Go into Control Panel ... System ... Hardware (or whatever it is that gives you your list of hardware) and identify from there specifically what your hardware is. It's always best to get the newest drivers directly from the company that manufactured the hardware.