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Hi,

a couple of days ago my windows 95 system froze while opening a program. Upon restarting the system there was an error after the POST saying "disk boot failure, insert system disk".
Further restarts has the screen now displaying a "disk I/O error" message...

I used scandisk.exe on the drive and found that there was a bad cluster and perhaps some of the critical windows files have been corrupted in the process.

I want to repair the current installation of windows 95 on the hard drive, I have the windows 95 install floppys.
However, I want to keep all of the programs, data AND drivers on the hard drive (i.e. I don't want to change or replace anything else other than to repair the windows 95 system files).
This is because I do not have any installs for the programs nor drivers anymore...

Would anyone know how to solve this problem? I would appreciate any help offered


-Thanks

Welcome to PCHF

All your efforts may be worthless on a drive that is failing. This is dipping into the archives, I dont even think an in place install works with 95. You are probably looking at scrapping the drive and starting fresh.

Hi,

I wouldn't mind a fresh install but I just can't do that (I might as well scrap it) as I need the programs and I don't have the install files for them...

I inserted a win95A bootdisk and used the "A:\>sys C:"" command, this enabled the hdd to boot into windows. However, when performing scandisk, there is still a fair bit of errors coming from the windows directories.
E.g. C:\Windows\Command, C:\Windows\System, C:\Windows\Sysbckup, etc.

The programs I have on the hdd seem to still work, but I'm worried about all of those windows errors, etc.

I am currently using ghost on a floppy to copy the entire hdd (errors and all)...


-Thanks

Yes I was going to suggest that you try cloning the drive, if it is indeed the hard drive causing errors and not the system files themselves you can clone the drive and boot right into Windows without a problem. I have done this many times successfully.

Hi,

when I copied the hdd prior to performing the "sys C:" command, the cloned hdd also couldn't boot.

Is there a way of replacing the cord windows 95 files without replacing the drivers, programs, etc.? I think using the repair options on windows xp does this, but windows 95 doesn't have that option...


-Thanks

See if Response Number 3 in the following link helps you in your situation

repair/reinstall WIN 95 from DOS - Computing.Net