Windows 95 Start-up Error

Adjusted points to 200

1) No. Safe mode works ONLY in 16-color mode because no SVGA
driver is loaded, only standard VGA-driver to exclude video conflicts
2) Press F8 upon restart after 'Starting Windows ...' to get menu
   Select BOOTLOG.TXT Logged Mode. Win95 will hang as usual.
   Restart. Enter menu again. Select Command Prompt only. Take
   BOOTLOG.TXT file from C:\. Examine it for FAILed drivers and
   pay special attention to several last lines. Now tricky part.
   These drivers can be loaded through SYSTEM.INI in device= in
   [386enh] section or in Registry. If they in SYSTEM.INI you
   know what to do (little ; in start of line). If they in
   registry, enter Safe Mode and run Regedit from \Windows folder
   Search for your driver and remove entry.
3) You can try if your modem not works with new rmm.pdr
4) Try these steps. I have Win95 installed long time and NEVER
   reinstalled it. But if you want to you can reinstall it with
   command: setup /p f
   This will clean registry and replace broken files. You can add
   /d if you want to build win.ini and system.ini from scratch.

BOOTLOG.TXT only shows that Load Failed for CS4232C.EXE (my CrystalWare sound driver) and SETVER.EXE.  It doesn't show any Windows drivers.  However, when I start in safe mode, it shows a bunch (20+) Windows drivers being loaded successfully.

Hi Eric!

Sometimes Windows 95, because of the number of changes occuring at the same time, becomes confused or in actuality does not load or it incorrectly loads certain drivers, which causes a lockup. MS would have you believe this doesn't happened, but unfortunately it happens more frequently than not.

PDR files normally load device drivers, especially involving your Windows 95 IO Subsystem, the base system that runs windows.
I suspect that even though these drivers have been added to your system, they have not properly loaded and registered.

There's three ways to approach your problem!

1. You can remove the sound, modem and any other non-essential peripheral cards and reboot the system. Since they are not there and therefore not detected by Windows, Windows will not load the drivers. You can then sort out a basic system and make it run properly, then begin adding back each component and the correct drivers for it.

2. You can use device manager in safe mode to remove some of the devices, reboot and let windows 95 detect the device and then manually load the correct driver from a floppy.

3. The last, and really just a deviation from the above, would be to strip down the system to its basic components, no sound, no modem etc, just what you need to run the system, plus the cd rom drive, fdisk the hard drive, format it and load windows and setup a basic system using the custom install. At this point, you would load just the drivers (like the PDR) which involve the basic system. Once this is running properly, you can then add back one component at a time based upon their difficulty level as an install.

If this appeals to you and you need a more specific procedure, let me know and I'll help you along.

Best regards,
Dennis

Hey Dennis, what about the system.da0 and user.da0 files?

To David, *.da0 files are miserable Micro$oft try to backup system
registry. But, unfortunately, registry is changed EVERY startup,
thus once you have broken registry ... next startup -> broken
registry copied as backup. The best proven way is to backup these
files manually in some place when you have working system. Dennis
most probably right about multiply changes. I ate something like
that when installed modem software and couple of programs with it
Win95 wanted to reboot, but I (stupidly) not gave it to do this
until last setup, then I rebooted and what was after startup:
"Now it's safe to turn your computer off" screen. Very funny.

Now to business: what was last line in BOOTLOG.TXT ?

david_r, restoring a registry from da0 files would normally work had Eric not updated his files, especially the PDR layer which is part of the IO subsystem which is not involved in the registry. If Eric does as you suggest, he runs the risk of an unrecoverable crash of the IO Subsystem and possible loss of the MBR.

Busuka, as Eric notes above, he had a failed video driver and setver.exe. Since the video driver shouldn't have caused the problem Eric is dealing with, especially when booting to safe mode, I suspect that there is either some memory conflicts in the video area and/or Interrupt 13, 14 & 15 that aren't being resolved by the psr file.

Dennis

Eric, can you post your CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files ?
(maybe he has infamous CD-ROM SYS driver conflict: IRQ 15)

buska and Dennis, thank you for the education (really) I thought the da0 files were only changed when windows said "Your configuration files are being updated...." and Dennis I directed my comment at you because I wasn't suggesting that he do anything with them, I have read your previous posts and knew that YOU would know if that was a viable alternative...
again, thank you guys

First of all, thanks everyone for your time in reviewing this problem.  Last night I reread busuka's suggestion and tried commenting out everything in the 386enh section of system.ini.  Through a process of elimination, I found one entry that was causing the system to lock and by commenting that out, I was able to load Windows.  That entry was "mouse=*vmouse", which means that now Device Manager shows my "PS/2 Mouse" as unavailable, even though I can use it fine.

I reloaded the Lucent 56K drivers, restarted Windows and it said that it loaded the modem, but I can't get it to dial and diagnostics says that it can't communicate with the modem.

1. How do I get my mouse back?
2. How do I get the modem working?

Here is the 386enh section of my system.ini:
[386enh]
device=d:\afterdrk\adw30.386
DEVICE=C:\CSW70\CSDVXD.386
DEVICE=C:\CSW70\CSSAFE95.386
ebios=*ebios
device=*vshare
device=*dynapage
device=*vcd
device=*vpd
device=*int13
woafont=dosapp.fon
display=*vdd,*vflatd
; mouse=*vmouse
keyboard=*vkd
device=*vpowerd

Here are the items from my bootlog.txt that show failure:
[001711C0] Loading Device = C:\WINDOWS\CS4232C.EXE
[001711CD] LoadFailed     = C:\WINDOWS\CS4232C.EXE
[001711CE] Loading Device = C:\WINDOWS\SETVER.EXE
[001711CF] LoadFailed     = C:\WINDOWS\SETVER.EXE
...
[0017121B] Loading Vxd = ndis2sup.vxd
[0017121B] LoadFailed  = ndis2sup.vxd
[0017121C] Loading Vxd = vserver.vxd
[0017121D] LoadFailed  = vserver.vxd
[0017121F] Loading Vxd = vshare
[0017121F] LoadFailed  = vshare
[00171286] INITCOMPLETE = SDVXD  
[00171286] INITCOMPLETEFAILED  = SDVXD
...
LoadStart = ATILCD.DLL
LoadFail = ATILCD.DLL Failure code is 0002
LoadStart = C:\WINDOWS\fonts\dummy.lyt
LoadFail = C:\WINDOWS\fonts\dummy.lyt Failure code is 0002

3. How do I give points to busuka for his idea?

Eric: If Busuka solved your entire problem(s) which he hasn't, he would post an answer and you would accept it. However your problems aren't over. I do see the problems now that you've posted this information. I'll give Busuka an opportunity to solve the mouse and modem problem before I post the answer. In an effort to help him (Busuka along, there are three things that need to be chnaged on your system)
Dennis

Didn't mean to imply that Busaka would get alll the points, Dennis.  Your answer helped as well. I'll be glad to split the points, if that's possible.

Thanks,
Eric

Hi Eric: I have no problem in sharing points, that wasn't the point, the problem your seeing has nothing to do with the entry you made for the mouse in the *ini* file. It just disabled the device in protected mode which causes your mouse to revert to real mode Bios drivers. By doing this, you resolved a bus conflict by disabling the mouse and enabling the modem. Here's the proper fix for the problem.
-----------------------------------------
1. Boot your system to Bios/Cmos setup and enable PS/2 support (or confirm that it is enabled) and make sure that IRQ 12 is enabled for the mouse.

2. Go into peripherals and disable serial port 1 or 2 (Com 1 or 2) your choice.

3. Save the Bios setup and let your system boot through to Windows 95.

4. Click on Start, Run and type in "Sysedit" without quotes and touch enter. Go to your System.ini file and verify that the following lines are present. If the aren't, then add them.

       [boot]
       mouse.drv=mouse.drv
       drivers=mmsystem.dll
 
      [386Enh]
       mouse=*vmouse

5. In the [386Enh] section, add a semi-colon before this line like this:

;device=d:\afterdrk\adw30.386

**After Dark has several known problems and conflicts with Windows 95.

Save your System.ini file and close Sysedit.

6. Click Start, Settings, Control Panel. Click on the System Icon and then go into device manager.

a. Scroll down to modem, expand it by clicking on the + sign, highlight the entry and then click remove.

b. Scoll to the Mouse entry, click on the + sign, highlight it to expand it and then click remove.

c. Scroll down to Ports [LPT-COM] and make sure the Com port you disabled in the Bios IS NOT shown.

7. Reboot the system. Your PS/2 mouse should be found as well as your modem. At this point, you can add your modem software or use a standard modem driver from Windows, however the one that came with the modem is better.

8. If the modem still doesn't work (like you noted above), go to control panel, then click the modem icon. Remove the modem then add a new modem, but this time, instead of letting windows detect it, choose it from a list and then use "Have disk". Once it's loaded, then use the modem diagnostic.

Best regards,
Dennis

I was some time off. So I didn't solved your problem and I'm not
greedy for points :)
I thought that situation is following:
Mouse driver installed in memory, hanging on COM1/IRQ4
Modem driver *searches* COMs for modem hardware, but falling on
mouse. Maybe moving mouse on COM2 will easily solve this conflict
(physically moving). About PS/2 mouse ... not sure. You may
receive PS/2 mouse support, but I doubt that this PARTICULAR mouse,
connected to the PARTICULAR COM port will respond to Win95 mouse
driver for PS/2.

Best way is to try.
Ian

Besuka: Eric's using a PS/2 mouse not a serial mouse!
Dennis

To Dennis: uhh, where you found that ? I re-read whole discussion
and failed to find Eric's comment that he have PS/2 mouse.

Busuka: Eric says it here:

 "Through a process of elimination, I found one entry that was causing the system to lock and by commenting that out, I was able to load Windows. That entry was "mouse=*vmouse", which means that now Device Manager shows my "PS/2 Mouse" as unavailable, even though I can use it fine. "

Dennis

Eric, last shot: do you have PS/2 mouse ? Do you have PHYSICAL
PS/2 port, or mouse connected to COM port ?

1. I went into BIOS but only one serial port (port A) was listed, so I disabled that.
2. By continually deleting and re-adding the modem and the mouse, I got both working with the following settings:
Mouse: IRQ 12
Modem: COM2, 02F8-02FF, IRQ 3, DMA 07 and 06
No COM1 is listed in device manager.
3. Although both the modem and mouse work, starting Win95 now seems to take much longer than before and I still get the following errors in bootlog.txt:

[00160043] Loading Device = C:\WINDOWS\CS4232C.EXE
[00160050] LoadFailed     = C:\WINDOWS\CS4232C.EXE
[00160051] Loading Device = C:\WINDOWS\SETVER.EXE
[00160053] LoadFailed     = C:\WINDOWS\SETVER.EXE

[001600C0] Loading Vxd = ndis2sup.vxd
[001600C0] LoadFailed  = ndis2sup.vxd
[001600C2] Loading Vxd = vserver.vxd
[001600C3] LoadFailed  = vserver.vxd
[001600C7] Loading Vxd = vshare
[001600C7] LoadFailed  = vshare
[001601E0] INITCOMPLETE = SDVXD  
[001601E1] INITCOMPLETEFAILED  = SDVXD

LoadStart = ATILCD.DLL
LoadFail = ATILCD.DLL Failure code is 0002
LoadStart = C:\WINDOWS\fonts\dummy.lyt
LoadFail = C:\WINDOWS\fonts\dummy.lyt Failure code is 0002

4. How do I eliminate those load failures?

cs4232c.exe is my CrystalWare(tm) CS4232 Audio Initialization Utility, Version 1.70.  The error message at start-up is that it was unable to load cwaudio.bin from c:\windows and it will use the firmware version instead.  There is a cwaudio.bin file in that directory.

I'll save the ATI.DLL problem for another date.  Thanks for all the help.

Eric: What ever you choose is fine, we'll still help you here with the ATI issue!
Dennis