OldGrayGary

Hi thrival


Sorry this reply is so late, I've been away from the forums for a few days (busy as heck).

For a quick-fix try, you could see if the scanreg /restore command (to restore a saved Registry from before the storm) helps. Boot the PC with a bootable floppy diskette, and from the command prompt, type the command we just mentioned: scanreg /restore

Windows 98/98se saves five Registries by default -- see if you have one available from before the storm, and if so, try restoring it (by selecting it from the list).

Should that not help, try booting into Safe Mode and removing all instances of sound and graphics devices in Device Manager. Windows will redetect them on reboot. If you have known-good drivers still on the hard drive, it might be able to find them (or you could point Windows to them, should you be prompted to do so by the New Hardware Wizard). If you download good drivers ahead-of-time, you can cancel the New Hardware Found screens, and use the installers for the drivers that you downloaded beforehand. You might uninstall and reinstall your players, too, if redoing the drivers doesn't help.

Old drivers hanging about & getting loaded in Win9x can be a real pain. We don't recommend the casual use of Registry Cleaners, but if you get to your wits end on this repair, a decent tool that I use for such cleanups is CCleaner. It gets good reviews, and it has extensive "undo" features in case the changes cause more trouble than they cure. It's available at most reputable download sites; cnet's download.com is a usually-clean source.

Best of luck!
. . . Gary