Will boot to background & mouse pointer. No icons, no start button. Only Ctrl-Alt-Del works.

Greetings, tomnj2005 !

Reinstall Windows on top of itself. You will not lose data. Boot up with your Windows CD. If not bootable, boot to DOS with CD ROM support. If you don't have such boot disk, get one from www.bootdisk.com.  While in DOS, put in your Windows CD. Type "setup" or "E:\setup" without the quotes.

If you don't have the Windows CD, the system files may be in the CABS folder. From a:> type "c:\windows\options\cabs\setup" without the quotes and hit ENTER.


Cheers!

C:\Bootlog.txt is a hidden file, so even if you do a Directory listing in DOS (DIR C:\*.*) it won't show it.  You could boot to a Windows 98 boot floppy, swap it for a blank floppy when it gets to the A:\> prompt, and then copy bootlog.txt to that floppy by using the following series of commands (press <Enter> after typing each line):

c:
cd windows
cd command
attrib -h  c:\bootlog.txt
copy  c:\bootlog.txt  a:\bootlog.txt
attrib +h  c:\bootlog.txt

You still have the problem of a massive file that will probably need to open in Wordpad, and having to plough through it trying to interpret the results.  Remember, you should CREATE a NEW bootlog.txt file or there is no sense in inspecting it.  This file isn't created freshly with each boot, you have to TELL the system to create it:

Press F8 as the system boots, and you will get to the Boot menu.  Choose the "Logged" option.  Now you can use the series of commands detailed above to copy it to a blank floppy and take it to another functional computer for analysis.

A good way to inspect bootlog.txt (after copying it to floppy) is as follows:

1. Right-Click on either of the following links and select "Save Target As" to download the "Bootlog Text Analyser Tool".

http://www.easydesksoftware.com/zips/Bla.zip
http://woundedmoon.org/win32/bootloganalyzer123.zip

2. Use Winzip to extract the single file BLA.EXE and delete the .zip file.

3. Run the program by double-clicking on it.  Use "File > Open" and select the A:\ drive with the copy of Bootlog.txt on it or it will try and look for C:\bootlog.txt on the PC you are using.  Just say OK to the advice message telling you about bootlog.txt, and select A:\bootlog.txt from the A:\ drive, then click "OK".

4. Click in the checkbox "Show Failures" and it will create a filtered list of all lines which have "Failed" in them.

5. Now use "File > Save As", and save as a text file to the floppy or your hard drive using a suitable name.

6. Copy the contents of that "Failed" list and paste it here providing that it doesn't create a file 3 feet long!!

This should give some idea of what part(s) of the boot process might be causing the problem.

If you prefer the manual approach, the same can be achieved by simply opening A:\bootlog.txt in WordPad, and then doing a "case-insensitive" word search for the word "fail".  You could then copy each line out into another text file.  Why do it the hard way though :-)

Tell me, was the game a new one or an old one?

Older games won't do the same level of version checking as new ones, and might easily have replaced current new Windows system files with old Windows 95 versions.

war1's suggestion of reinstalling Windows right back over itself would probably restore the correct file versions if this IS the case, and caza13's suggestion relates to the fact that the Windows 98 Start menu and Quick Launch Toolbar are supplied by Internet Explorer core files.

IF the system's Internet Explorer HAS been upgraded to IE 6, then caza13's suggestion may be the cure, but personally I would FIRST try reinstalling Windows 98.  Downloading Internet Explorer 6 on another computer will probably only download the component files needed on THAT machine, and might not fully install all the files needed on the affected system.

The problem may simply related to a registry corruption caused by the (failed?) install of the game.

IMHO (even if it fails...) a registry restore is the first step, rather than a Windows reinstall and all the hassle with Windows Updates, etc.