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tcg23
05-26-03, 11:05 AM
Well, to begin my story I installed win98 on my laptop and downloaded all the drivers, it was running sweet. I was going through customizing things on the root dir of c:\, if you know anything about win98 you know logo.sys,logos.sys, and logow.sys are the three (3) boot,shutdown, wait screens that you see. I also know that if the logo.sys file is not present that the win98 boot screen is actually integrated into another file (msdos.sys I think). Well, since it was after 1:00am I wasn't thinking and I saw a lo.sys file and deleted it, thinking it was the bootup logo, I also deleted all the log files, but I did not empty the recycle bin.
Now when I boot my laptop up it asks me for my BIOS password (which is normal) I enter the password, then it says 'Valid password entered, starting to boot...'. Then the all of the sudden I see, "VFAT Device Init Failed" (this is a BSOD) "A device required by VFAT is unavlible or missing. VFAT cannot continue loading. System Halted."

Before I reached this screen I could boot to a floppy, thing is I don't know how (if there is a way) to undel the files that are in the windows recycle bin. So what I did is changed the BIOS boot order to HDD first, because before it was giving me a device error code (which I did not write down and cannot replicate).
This is where I am now, the laptop boots to the HDD first (per BIOS instruction) and I cannot get into the bios to change the boot sequence to floppy to get into DOS. If I could get into DOS I would simply reinstall Win98 over itself which would restore any missing files (lo.sys).
Please advise!
-TheComputerGuy23
(Also, sorry for any misspelling)

tcg23
05-26-03, 11:10 AM
MS Knowledge Base Article of VFAT Problems.. (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;139063)

Check that link out, it might help. It didn't help me because I cannot get access to the HDD via a boot disk.
Tia,
-TheComputerGuy23

tcg23
05-26-03, 02:00 PM
I thought the VFAT erro had something to do with missing files on my HDD, so I pulled out the HDD and booted, I got the error then too. The boot sequence is HDD,CD,LAN,FDD I thought if I pulled the HDD out it would boot to CD, but it just gave me the VFAT BSOD. I need help...

Oh sweet! I just remembered there is a reset button on the front, it basically resets the BIOS. I reset that, then I could boot the the floppy, now I can access my C drive, I am reinstalling (I have the cab files on my HD). Lets hope that fixes it!
-TheComputerGuy23

tcg23
05-26-03, 03:42 PM
I reset the unit, booted to a floppy and reinstalled Win98 SE. Now all is well! I've got a config.sys menu going to boot to DOS or Win98SE. I fixed the problem, now i know and know is half the battle!:D
-TheComputerGuy23

Cube
05-26-03, 10:26 PM
Couldn't you have just copied the IO.SYS file from your bootable floppy (assuming it was a Win98 Bootdisk), instead of reinstalling ALL of windows?

tcg23
05-26-03, 11:31 PM
I probably should have tried to boot to windows after resetting the BIOS, but reinstalling win98 was no big deal, all my data, drivers, aond configurations were there. Everything is there and working. I've learned a lesson, never work on your pc when you're half asleep.
-TheComputerGuy23