Member Avatar for harris580

Computer's OS had become damaged or corrupt, and was giving a myriad of glitches and hangs. Clean install was performed including FDISK, repartitioning, format, preinstall virusscan, run on this computer from another computer bridged to it, and then reinstallation of OS. All operations went without a hitch, but, now The following message occurs:

Standard Mode: Fault outside of MS-Dos Extender
EC=0000 CS=307 IP=3E03
AX=0080 BX=0000 CX=0002
DX=0000 SI=0180 DI=0000 BP=015A
DS=0277 ES=027F SS=027F SP=013C

Please remove any Floppy disks from your drives and press any key to restart your system.

When a key is pushed the computer reboots, but goes into a loop of showing the error message, you push a key to reboot, and it reboots to the same error message.

The machine will not boot to safe mode although I am able to get to the DOS prompt by booting with an emergency startup CD. There are no post or beep codes observed but am able to get into the bios using ESC and F1 during the unsuccessful boot employing the HD. The computer has no floppy drive, so several of the the attempts to remedy the situation have been met with limited sucess

Any help would be appreciated,
Dan

Toshiba Tecra 8100 Laptop
850 MHz Pentium III
512 MB SDRAM
20 MB HD
OS windows 98 SE

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by Chaky

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Brief, prioritized troubleshooting that fills gaps in the replies from and and uses the emergency CD you can already boot to. The aim is to quickly localize whether the failure is the installed drive/media, something in the laptop chassis/power path, or an installation artifact — then take the minimal next step.

  1. Isolate the hard drive. Power down, remove the laptop drive and boot the emergency CD. If the machine runs normally from CD with the drive absent, the problem is almost certainly the drive or its installed content. If the error still appears with no drive fitted, the fault is in the laptop hardware/firmware and the HDD can be set aside for later tests.

  2. Test the drive on another system. Put the drive in a USB/IDE adapter or a second machine and run a surface/SMART check with the drive maker's bootable tool or a rescue/live OS. Copy any data you need first. A remote scan from another PC both verifies physical health and removes the laptop as a variable.

  3. Try alternate boot media. Boot a different rescue disc (a small Linux live CD or a well-known rescue CD) to exercise the system beyond the DOS prompt you have now. If a different boot image runs fine on the laptop, reinstalling from a different Windows CD or the vendor restore media is the sensible next move.

  4. Laptop-specific housekeeping. Fully drain and reset power: remove battery and AC, hold power 20 seconds, then reseat drive and memory and retry. Remove any PC Card/PCMCIA or removable modules. Reseating connectors and doing a power drain can clear stuck controllers that block normal booting.

  5. Next steps based on results. If the drive tests bad, replace it and reinstall. If it tests good but the laptop still faults with the drive attached, capture the drive image (for later analysis) and consider vendor service for firmware/board-level faults.

These steps are ordered to protect data and rapidly narrow scope. If the diagnostics point to the drive but data recovery is required, prioritize imaging before further writes.

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Member Avatar for xrugger

Sounds to me that the harddrive may have bad sectors. [[caused by heat I would imagine.]] put another drive in the machine and see how it boots. if your able to load an OS that puts you a step further. also verify that the fan in the machine is actually coming on when it powers on.

Member Avatar for Chaky

(copy-paste from microsoft support site)

Bad Fault in MS-DOS Extender
This error message occurs when the fault handler dispatcher in DOSX.EXE generates another cascaded fault while trying to handle a protected-mode exception. This error is usually caused by one of the following factors:
• HIMEM.SYS is unable to control the A20 line.
• DOS=HIGH is not functioning properly (related to HIMEM.SYS control).
• The RAM, static RAM (SRAM), single in-line memory module (SIMM), or dynamic RAM (DRAM) chips are not functioning properly.
• You are running DR DOS.
• The third-party memory manager is not configured correctly.
• The EMM386.EXE NOEMS x=A000-EFFF line is missing from the Config.sys file.
• You have an old, out-of-date ROM BIOS.
• Your CMOS settings are incorrect.
• Your Windows files are old or corrupted. To test this, create a new directory on the hard drive, and install Windows in that directory.
• Your disks are corrupted.
• Your system is infected with the Form, Forms, Noint, or Yankee Doodle virus.

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