Windows 95 : user.exe

'user.exe' how I loathe thee. Now that has a nice rhyme to it. Well I guess I should explain the basis of my new found hatred towards, what would appear, an arbitrary system file.

It all started back a few weeks ago. I came home from work, turned on my computer, and went to grab a cup o' coffee. When I came back to my computer it was at a 'c-prompt'. Now this is odd, it should have been in Windows 95.

So I rebooted the system to see if there were any errors. Sure enough there was one. The error message was:

Windows failed to load.
Error loading system module 'user.exe'.
You must reinstall Windows.

The first two lines might not be the exact wording of the message, but that last line is exactly what I was reading on my screen.

So I did what any veteran of Windows and/or DOS would do. I rebooted, and rebooted, and rebooted some more. Same message each time, so I prayed and rebooted, and rebooted some more and prayed some more. No luck.

I was left with the only option available. Reinstall Win95. Luckily I still had DOS and was able to copy and backup most of my crucial files. Also after 4-5 previous reinstalls, I have good experience at the reinstallation procedure. I had backed up and documented the CD-ROM and DOS driver issue, so I could load a CD while in DOS, which bit me before. Windows 95 comes on a CD-ROM, in order to run your CD-ROM you need drivers, thankfully Microsoft included the CD-ROM drivers on the CD-ROM. If your computer crashes and you need to reinstall Win95, you better remember how to load DOS CD-ROM drivers.

Due to my previous experience, installation was actually quite easy. Plus a pleasant and unexpected bonus from the reinstallation, it freed up over 250 megs in my WINDOWS directory. WOW!! The only program that I did not reinstall was their Internet Explorer, which I suspect to be the culprit of the crash.

Today, everything seems to be ok. I'm still remembering things that I forgot to backup and make note of it, so next time I'll even be more prepared.