machine stopped booting to the desktop. Instead, it started displaying an error, “win.com” is corrupt or missing




You can try to “fi x” the “win.com” fi le fi rst before reinstalling the operating system
again. This involves replacing the “win.com” fi le on your computer (which is missing or corrupt) with a fresh copy from the Windows 98 CD. All this will be done by entering the MS-DOS prompt mode, running the “extract” command to retrieve the file from the CD and renaming it to “win.com”. If your Windows 98 CD is not 98 startup disk. If this is not available then a downloadable version of it is available on www.bootdisk.com. This bootable disk will take you to a DOS prompt and also load generic CD-ROM drivers so that you can access the contents of the Windows 98 CD. Make sure you choose “Start computer with CD-ROM support” whilst booting from the fl oppy disk. At the DOS prompt enter the following command to extract the file to the partition that contains the “Windows” folder.

extract X:\win98\win98_28.cab\win. cnf /L Y:\windows\

Replace “X” with your CD-ROM drive letter and “Y” with the partition that holds the “Windows” folder. Note that there is a space before and after “/L”. If you have
Windows 98 Second Edition installed then the cab file that contains “win.cnf” is
“Win98_25.cab”.

After the file is extracted and transferred, you will have to rename it with the following command, ren Y:\windows\win.cnf Y:\windows\win.com

If you are warned that you are about to replace a file with the same name, enter
“Y” to confi rm the action.

After replacing the file, restart your computer.