Dual-Boot: HIMEM.SYS corrupted after 7.2 update
Hello, This could be semi-OT, but I hope some of our list members with dual boot experience can help me. I have a Sony Vaio PCG-C1XS that I have fixed up to dual boot Windows98 and SuSE Linux. Two weeks ago I updated the SuSE Linux side from 7.0 to 7.2. Update seemed to go pretty well, and afterwards I booted into the linux side. Looked pretty good, so I shut down and went to bed. (Yep, another late night update ;-) Yesterday, I needed to boot into Windows to do something for my wife, but after the Windows98 splash screen came up, it reverted to the DOS screen and showed the error message that there was insufficient memory. I was prompted to hit any key, and when I did, the system said it could not find \WINDOWS\HIMEM.SYS. I confirmed that the file is there, but when I open it using the editor, it appears to be corrupted. It starts with about 40 lines of garbage characters that look like what a binary file looks like when you open it in vi. After the garbage, it looks like HIMEM.SYS was overwritten by system error output. As I see it, I could fix this one of two ways - rewrite the HIMEM.SYS file or use the recovery CD to restore the drive. I moved to NetBSD and then Linux from a Mac OS background, so I don't have a lot of experience fine-tuning DOS/Windows configuration files. Rewriting HIMEM.SYS would be a bit of an adventure, but if someone here knows what I should put in the file, I could probably do it. I hesitate to use the recovery CD, because I suspect it will remove my linux partition as well as everything I put on the notebook on the Windows side in the time I have been using it. Is that the case, or will it just restore the system files that are there? As I mentioned, this may be somewhat off-topic, since I am asking more for Windows info than I am for linux info, but I trust you more to help me preserve my linux system. I would appreciate whatever help you could offer. TIA, Sean -- Theo. Sean Schulze theo.schulze@myokay.net "[T]he key to maintaining leadership in the economy and the technology that are about to emerge is likely to be the social position of knowledge professionals and social acceptance of their values." -- Peter Drucker
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Theo. Sean Schulze