Starting in DOS mode

[Kirby of Doom]

How do I start in DOS instead of Windows? I want to get to the bottom of my computer problems.

[linkofzelda1]

Which operating system do you have?

[Kirby of Doom]

Windows XP.

I just checked now and when I run it in safe mode, it always gets stuck loading the driver atisgkaf.sys.

[linkofzelda1]

You can't boot up in DOS if you have XP. DOS is no longer a windows thing. You might try going to a true geek forum and asking. Though a lot of us here are, the real ones reside on other sites. Heh.

[Kirby of Doom]

I was able to boot up into some form of DOS from the Windows Install CD, but it didn't help.

[Starkist]

Press F8 before the Loading Windows screen, do "Last Known Good".

If that doesn't work...

Use a Win98 boot disk, rename the offending driver, and reboot. (Won't work if your disk is NTFS formatted though.)

If that doesn't work...

Get out your WinXP install CD, and boot the computer with it. Do a repair install rather than a full install.

[Kirby of Doom]

I'll try the repair install then. I might have to end up doing a full install or restore. I have a seperate D drive partition, so that shouldn't be affected, right?

edit: The repair install is the DOS thingy, right? I tried the chkdsk thing and it got stuck at 50% checking the C drive and said it was unrepairable. I'll try the reinstall or reformat when I know for sure it will only affect the C drive and not any other partitions (I worry too much).

[Starkist]

If you reformat (you should only do that as a last resort) then it will only affect the drive you tell it to. Formatting the C drive will not change anything on the D drive. However, if you have some programs installed on D, and you reformat C and reinstall Windows, you may have to reinstall those programs too.

[Kirby of Doom]

Believe me, I don't want to reinstall Windows at all, let alone reformat the drive. I have lots of things set up, especially for college networking stuff, and I'd have to set everything up again. But, knowing that it should be ok, I think that's what I might end up doing. Then again, I can always get help from someone else first. In any case, it's probably to late now. :shrug: Windows is a bitch. But I couldn't live without it. ;)

[Ich]

You could also boot from Win2k, which can use the NTFS structure. I'm running Win2k at home and have few problems.

[Kirby of Doom]

I just went ahead and reinstalled windows, complete with the reformat and everything. I suspect there was something wrong with the C drive partition. :shrug:

edit: Windows is having problems. :cry:
When I'm scrolling in iexplorer, it doesn't do it right. It's all "herky jerky." :shrug:

Also, it got rid of dual boot. Damn computer hog. ;)

[Starkist]

If the other OS is still intact on another drive, all you have to do is edit the boot.ini file to get the dual boot screen.

As for scrolling, go to the mouse applet in the Control Panel. On one of the tabs you can change how the wheel behaves.

[Gerudo]

actually if your scrolling is 'jerky' that would have to be your video drivers, at least it was with mine... i replaced my drivers and kaboom, no more problems...

[linkofzelda1]

Yeah, what gerudo said. The jerkiness is because you don't have your video drivers installed. Go to your manufacturer's website to get those.

[Kirby of Doom]

That's probably it. When I got this computer it was already set up with everything it was supposed to be specially for this computer, now it's just the default XP pro install settings.

Edit: That is it. I downloaded the video driver and installed and now it works fine. I guess I'll download the rest later.