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Windows 98 Corruption
Why many users may need to perform an in-place reinstall of Windows 98

Over the last few years, I have come to realize that many installations of Windows 98 are corrupted.  Not enough so as to be unusable(in most cases), but in a way that makes the PC more crash-prone and much more difficult to configure.  You may find, for example, that some user-setting changes won't "take."  When I discovered this, I looked around for a way to reinstall Windows without blowing away the current setup, and I finally found it.  I have used the following techniques a number of times with nary a problem and good results.  Disclaimer: I cannot guarantee the results, your mileage may vary--but at least you will have some idea as to the cause of some problems with Windows 98.

I uncovered this subtle corruption in the process of trying to configure the user interface.  The following are the steps involved in duplicating my technique for discovery, followed by my steps taken to repair it.  I have found this problem to be an excellent indicator of the need for repair.

The semi-official tool for modifying the user interface is TweakUI. It comes from Microsoft, but is oficially not supported--that does not diminish its usefulness.  There are two versions of this utility available, one for Windows XP and one for Windows 9x/NT/2000.  The easiest way to download the version needed here is to do a Google search on TweakUI 1.33 and follow the first link.  Download it to a convenient place;  if you are unfamiliar with downloading, save it to the Desktop.  The file is a self-extracting Zip archive;  double-click the icon.  A small window pops up on the desktop with the extract directory presented as C:\Windows\TEMP.  You can leave this as-is, or change this to just a period, a dot (to Windows, a single period means current directory, so that's where it will extract to), then click on the Unzip button.  After extraction, one of the icons will look like a little notebook and be titled tweakui.inf--right-click on that icon and select Install from the pop-up menu.  This will bring up an installation window and a help window. I recommend that you at least look over the help file for a bit of orientation--but my instructions will be pretty explicit, so you shouldn't have to look too closely.  When you close the help window, the installation completes.

Once TweakUI is installed, it becomes part of the Control Panel, so that's where you go to activate it.  It's a very handy tool, but a little goes a long way, so be careful. It usually shows up in the bottom row of the Control Panel window, right next to the Users icon.  Double-click on the TweakUI icon to activate it, then go to the Explorer tab.  At the top of that window are some references to the Shortcut overlay icon.  Click the light arrow button to activate it, then click Apply.  The Desktop will refresh (the icons will flicker) and when it comes back, the square white box with a black arrow will have changed to a less-obtrusive grey arrow.  If the Shortcut overlay does not change, you have a corrupted Windows 98.  This inability to change the "shortcut arrow" icon overlay using TweakUI indicates the need to do an in-place reinstall of Win 98.

Note the Internet/network settings and the computer and user names. These are about the only things that I have seen get clobbered by the following process.

Run the Setup program from DOS; don't boot into Windows. If you have the "full" version of 98, you may have to change the filename C:\Windows\WIN.COM to something like C:\Windows\WINCOM.BAK. Let the Setup process proceed. If it prompts you as to the name of the Windows directory, just change WINDOWS.000 to WINDOWS and proceed on. The rest of the install should require no further interaction, for the most part.

The new install will retain nearly all the settings and programs of the original install. You may have to reinstall some patches, but it comes out pretty clean -- and it sure beats having to reinstall all your other software!

At this point, it's also a good idea to download and install the Unofficial Windows 98SE Service Pack (Google links).  Not only does it roll up nearly all Microsoft patches for 98SE, it also adds other third-party items that I tend to add anyway, like the Adaptec ASPI layer.

Last revised: 23-April 2005.  Copyright © 2004 Michael Rudas.   All rights reserved.   The opinions expressed in this article are not necessarily those of the other members of the Oak Park Computer Club.   All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.   This article was created using the EditPad Classic text editor,  OpenOffice.org 1.1.4  word processor,and Nvu--all free.   Permission is hereby granted to publish this article in an unmodified form, except for formatting (contact me for changes or updated versions).   Technical questions and help requests can be directed to my tech-support mailbox, the link to which can be found on this site or the OPCC site.