 | | From: | Rodney | | Subject: | Safe Mode | | Date: | Sat, 22 Jan 2005 07:49:21 +1300 |
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 | A friend has an ancient 486 running Windows 95. It is permanently locked
in safe mode. At one stage you can get a menu display that would normally
allow you to get out - but the keyboard freezes. You can play games on the
PC but little else. Can anyone suggest (apart from upgrading) what might be
going on and how to fix it.
Rod
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| | From: | Gordon | | Subject: | Wow 8 something years on (Re: Safe Mode) | | Date: | Sat, 22 Jan 2005 17:52:45 +1300 |
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| On Sat, 22 Jan 2005 07:49:21 +1300, Rodney wrote:
> A friend has an ancient 486 running Windows 95.
WOW! The 486 chip is still in service, and not in a third world country.
So there we go the 486 lives on to serve in the Internet age.
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| | From: | Roger Johnstone | | Subject: | Re: Wow 8 something years on (Re: Safe Mode) | | Date: | 22 Jan 2005 06:51:52 GMT |
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| In Gordon wrote:
> On Sat, 22 Jan 2005 07:49:21 +1300, Rodney wrote:
>
>> A friend has an ancient 486 running Windows 95.
>
> WOW! The 486 chip is still in service, and not in a third world
> country. So there we go the 486 lives on to serve in the Internet age.
The (popular) Internet age started 10 years ago, when Windows 95 was
still in beta and budget PCs still used 486 CPUs.
I'm using a Pentium 200MHz with Windows 98SE at work. Until about two
years ago it was a 486 100MHz with Windows 95, and a couple of years
before that it was a 386DX with Window 3.11. I'm at the end of the
computer hand-me-down line :-) but since it's only being used for light
programming tasks the speed doesn't matter much. I did just go out and
buy a nice $80 not-very-old 17" CRT monitor for it though, as I was
getting sick of using old 15" monitors, especially when the new compiler
really needs to run at 1024x768. Wow! I can see again.
--
Roger Johnstone, Invercargill, New Zealand
http://vintageware.orcon.net.nz/
________________________________________________________________________
No Silicon Heaven? Preposterous! Where would all the calculators go?
Kryten, from the Red Dwarf episode "The Last Day"
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| | From: | froggy | | Subject: | Re: Wow 8 something years on (Re: Safe Mode) | | Date: | Sat, 22 Jan 2005 17:48:53 +1300 |
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| On Sat, 22 Jan 2005 17:52:45 +1300, Gordon wrote:
> On Sat, 22 Jan 2005 07:49:21 +1300, Rodney wrote:
>
>> A friend has an ancient 486 running Windows 95.
>
> WOW! The 486 chip is still in service, and not in a third world country.
> So there we go the 486 lives on to serve in the Internet age.
I have windows 95 running on a cyrix 486 class 100 MHz beasty
with a whopping 16 MB of RAM and 130 MB of HDD space
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| | From: | Matty | | Subject: | Re: Wow 8 something years on (Re: Safe Mode) | | Date: | Sat, 22 Jan 2005 21:02:30 +1300 |
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| froggy wrote:
> On Sat, 22 Jan 2005 17:52:45 +1300, Gordon wrote:
>
>
>>On Sat, 22 Jan 2005 07:49:21 +1300, Rodney wrote:
>>
>>
>>>A friend has an ancient 486 running Windows 95.
>>
>>WOW! The 486 chip is still in service, and not in a third world country.
>>So there we go the 486 lives on to serve in the Internet age.
>
> I have windows 95 running on a cyrix 486 class 100 MHz beasty
> with a whopping 16 MB of RAM and 130 MB of HDD space
I have a working HP 286 with 1MB of RAM and 20MB of disk.
It's probably 8 MHz. Runs many commercial applications like greased
lightning.
I'd like a bit more disk space though, 30MB would be fine.
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| | From: | froggy | | Subject: | Re: Wow 8 something years on (Re: Safe Mode) | | Date: | Sat, 22 Jan 2005 20:59:08 +1300 |
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| On Sat, 22 Jan 2005 21:02:30 +1300, Matty wrote:
> froggy wrote:
> I have a working HP 286 with 1MB of RAM and 20MB of disk.
> It's probably 8 MHz. Runs many commercial applications like greased
> lightning.
> I'd like a bit more disk space though, 30MB would be fine.
steady on there bud.. hard drive space isnt cheap ya know :P
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| | From: | Matty | | Subject: | Re: Wow 8 something years on (Re: Safe Mode) | | Date: | Sun, 23 Jan 2005 11:03:59 +1300 |
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| froggy wrote:
> On Sat, 22 Jan 2005 21:02:30 +1300, Matty wrote:
>
>
>>froggy wrote:
>
>
>>I have a working HP 286 with 1MB of RAM and 20MB of disk.
>>It's probably 8 MHz. Runs many commercial applications like greased
>>lightning.
>>I'd like a bit more disk space though, 30MB would be fine.
>
>
> steady on there bud.. hard drive space isnt cheap ya know :P
The extra disk space will be filled up only by my typing in text.
How long will it take me to type 10 million characters?
At 2 chars/second, about 35 weeks at 8 hours per day.
I don't think I'll ever manage that.
I think there's lots of data somewhere that I can delete anyway!
On second thoughts I'll keep the machine as it is. What other PCs are
still working perfectly after 20 years?
I'll get a laptop. A 386 or 486 would do fine, with at least 640K of
memory. I think it would need to have a FAT4 disk.
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| | From: | Mackin | | Subject: | Re: Wow 8 something years on (Re: Safe Mode) | | Date: | Sun, 23 Jan 2005 11:27:38 +1300 |
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| Matty wrote:
> froggy wrote:
>> On Sat, 22 Jan 2005 21:02:30 +1300, Matty wrote:
>>
>>
>>>froggy wrote:
>>
>>
>>>I have a working HP 286 with 1MB of RAM and 20MB of disk.
>>>It's probably 8 MHz. Runs many commercial applications like greased
>>>lightning.
>>>I'd like a bit more disk space though, 30MB would be fine.
>>
>>
>> steady on there bud.. hard drive space isnt cheap ya know :P
>
> The extra disk space will be filled up only by my typing in text.
> How long will it take me to type 10 million characters?
> At 2 chars/second, about 35 weeks at 8 hours per day.
> I don't think I'll ever manage that.
> I think there's lots of data somewhere that I can delete anyway!
>
> On second thoughts I'll keep the machine as it is. What other PCs are
> still working perfectly after 20 years?
> I'll get a laptop. A 386 or 486 would do fine, with at least 640K of
> memory. I think it would need to have a FAT4 disk.
I have an old 386 Toshiba laptop that hasn't been used for years. Maybe
I'll pull it out and see if it still works.
Mackin.
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| | From: | Adder | | Subject: | Re: Wow 8 something years on (Re: Safe Mode) | | Date: | Sun, 23 Jan 2005 21:24:07 +1300 |
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| In article in nz.comp on
Sat, 22 Jan 2005 17:48:53 +1300, froggy
says...
> On Sat, 22 Jan 2005 17:52:45 +1300, Gordon wrote:
>
> > On Sat, 22 Jan 2005 07:49:21 +1300, Rodney wrote:
> >
> >> A friend has an ancient 486 running Windows 95.
> >
> > WOW! The 486 chip is still in service, and not in a third world country.
> > So there we go the 486 lives on to serve in the Internet age.
> I have windows 95 running on a cyrix 486 class 100 MHz beasty
> with a whopping 16 MB of RAM and 130 MB of HDD space
i have it on a Pentium 100 with 48 MB, 2x HDD 1.2 GB & 540 MB
used to have 14k4 modem but now its 28k8
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| | From: | Roger_Nickel | | Subject: | Re: Safe Mode | | Date: | Sat, 22 Jan 2005 09:15:19 +1300 |
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| Rodney wrote:
> A friend has an ancient 486 running Windows 95. It is permanently locked
> in safe mode. At one stage you can get a menu display that would normally
> allow you to get out - but the keyboard freezes. You can play games on the
> PC but little else. Can anyone suggest (apart from upgrading) what might be
> going on and how to fix it.
>
> Rod
>
>
corrupted io.sys?. Can you select other boot menu options?; step by step
confirmation?; create log file?. The boot log file is called bootlog.txt
and the log file for the previous boot is renamed to bootlog.prv
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| | From: | Roger_Nickel | | Subject: | Re: Safe Mode | | Date: | Sat, 22 Jan 2005 09:40:14 +1300 |
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| Rodney wrote:
> A friend has an ancient 486 running Windows 95. It is permanently locked
> in safe mode. At one stage you can get a menu display that would normally
> allow you to get out - but the keyboard freezes. You can play games on the
> PC but little else. Can anyone suggest (apart from upgrading) what might be
> going on and how to fix it.
>
> Rod
>
>
Try to enable step by step confirmation or logged boot. The log file is
saved as bootlog.txt and the previous boot log is renamed to
bootlog.prv. If you can enable these other menu options then the DOS
system underlying Windows is working and the problem is probably an
overwritten windows library file. You need a log file to fix this. If
the whole menu system is frozen then you may have a corrupt io.sys or
corrupt msdos.sys -- io.sys controls the boot process up to the start of
safe mode and msdos.sys contains boot maenu options.
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| | From: | Invisible | | Subject: | Re: Safe Mode | | Date: | Sat, 22 Jan 2005 11:09:31 +1300 |
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| On Sat, 22 Jan 2005 09:40:14 +1300, Roger_Nickel
wrote:
>Rodney wrote:
>> A friend has an ancient 486 running Windows 95. It is permanently locked
>> in safe mode. At one stage you can get a menu display that would normally
>> allow you to get out - but the keyboard freezes. You can play games on the
>> PC but little else. Can anyone suggest (apart from upgrading) what might be
>> going on and how to fix it.
>>
>> Rod
>>
>>
>Try to enable step by step confirmation or logged boot. The log file is
>saved as bootlog.txt and the previous boot log is renamed to
>bootlog.prv. If you can enable these other menu options then the DOS
>system underlying Windows is working and the problem is probably an
>overwritten windows library file. You need a log file to fix this. If
>the whole menu system is frozen then you may have a corrupt io.sys or
>corrupt msdos.sys -- io.sys controls the boot process up to the start of
>safe mode and msdos.sys contains boot maenu options.
Another thing to try: a scandisk surface test from dos. Bad sectors may have
recently developed and Win95 can't read some files in the bad sectors.
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