micky wrote:
In microsoft.public.windowsxp.general, on Sun, 26 Aug 2018 20:16:16
-0400, micky wrote:

I have two laptops, win7 and winXP.

I installed some software desigend for win10 in win7 and I coudln't find
drivers,

so I installed it in winXP and all went well, maybe a little slowly at
the end, but the processor is probably a little slower, until it asked
if I wanted to restart.

Should I have known better than to have done this? Should it have
warned me that it doesn't work in XP?

Now it doesn't get past the dark, blank screen after the Flash screen.

Pressing F8 gave me choices but none, including boot logging, debugging
mode, last known good config, and safte mode, get any farther.

I'm sure there was a way to start one line at a time, saying Y or N to
each one. Isn't that likely to get me past the blank screen so I can
uninstall the software? But I don't remember how.

Although I didn't yet remember how I used to go line by line, at least I
figured out what the files are, I think, that specify those lines.

System.ini and win.ini.

Are there other files that load software during startup? Or is this
left over from win98 and I'm barking up the wrong tree?

I put Hiren's on a flashdrive so it appears as a CD and I can go in and
run a version of XP (and while I was there I made copies of almost all
of the data files I might want, in case I can't fix XP**)

win.ini makes reference to only one file, mapi32.dll
sytem.ini makes reference to two, mmdrv.dll
timer.drv

I thought there would be lots of files listed in these two files, but
there are only 3.

Where are all the startup files listed? NTBTLOG.TXT has 2000 lines.
Where is the file that lists all the fielsprograms to be loaded?

So far, it can't find msconfig.




BACKING UP DATA USING HIRENS:
**I only used this computer a tiny bit at home and on an 80 day trip I
took 18 months ago.

So I looked through all the data files and the new stuff was only in the

Text subdirectory, and I just copied the whole thing
Download directory, the whole thing. Took 31 minutes.
Email outbox. I already have all the incoming mail because I didn't
delete it from the server, and I have a copy of outgoing mail that I
sent to myself, but it will a little bit easier to merge with my
home-computer outbox now.
I just need a list of the software I've got installed. Halfway done
with that.

I copied all this to the flashdrive that is holding Hirens.

Hirens has its own file manager, but I was able to use my favorite file
manager that was already on XP. I can't start a second copy, I think,
without some extra effort.

Here are three OSes and their root level files.
No system.ini or win.ini in these three.

https://s33.postimg.cc/w3hoa2oq7/INI_FILE_SAMPLER.gif

Would you be looking at the root of Hirens by chance ?

INI files are just text files, and if some INI format
accepts #include directive, the files could be loaded
by some other file.

Paul