Anyone good at W98 problems?

[blackjack]

I have a friend who bought a second hand PC with W98 SE on, it has only 64mb of ram and a 12g hdd, the problem is when he turns his PC on and it starts to post he gets a WINDOWS PROTECTION ERROR. then it says restart your computer, so when it posts again it goes to a menu with the safe mode options etc, I have booted into safe mode (option 3)and run the AV scan an it found nothing, I tried safe mode with Internet support((option 4) but when I get to the security box asking for user and password it wont except his password . I tried the caps lock , the num lock that didn't help, there dosent appear to be a system restore with W98 and im a noob with that os so I dont know how to fix it, he doesn't have the 98 disc or any driver discs so im reluctant to format his drive in case I cant get all the hardware to work, any help would be very grateful.

 

[umakemebetter]

install D*** Small Linux or Xubuntu if possible

 

[setishock]

Boot to msdos and at the prompt type in:
fixmbr
When it's finished type in:
exit
Or type in:
win
Sounds like it may be corrupted. If he has the cd he may just want to do an install over the top of what's already there. Done that a few times.

 

[TheLastWolf]

I agree. Install a Linux Distro.

 

[Atomic Rooster]

Here's a nice read from the Microsoft Knowledge Base: How to Troubleshoot Windows Protection Error Messages.

 

[dude_se]

install xp and tweak it loads. drivers shouldnt be an issue

 

[Atomic Rooster]

XP would be nice, but "it has only 64mb of ram and a 12g hdd".

That is the bare minimum of memory for XP to operate on. It will be sluggish as all get out unless he can increase the amount of memory.

 

[dude_se]

ive ran xp on 32mb ram. if you seriously tweak it, then it can run fine... well as long as you have 1 or 2 app's open at once maximum, etc