Not sure what is going on with this laptop. It acts like it is working, but upon start-up it asks for MSINPUT. I try to type but nothing happens. After about 30 seconds the message disappears and I cannot see anything on the screen, however the hard drive is working, and if I mess around with the keys for a while, I can get it to sound the windows 98 start up chime. It is like I can get it to the desktop by blindly pressing keys, however nothing appears on the screen. I know the screen works because it displays the initial toshiba message and I was able to see a bios menu (once). Have not been able to get there again. Also there are funny symbols in places where there should be normal characters. Thinking that maybe the computer was corrupted 20 plus years ago. Trying to fix it up. Thanks in advance for any advice.
NEW: The error message is C:\SetMSINPUT: and I was unable to type any characters. If I fiddled with the keys long enough I could get the windows 98 chime to sound, but I could not see anything on screen. Yes, I was able to boot to safe mode. However I am not sure what else I can do at this point. Thanks
C:\SetMSINPUT:does not look like much of an error message, more like a train wreck. But early Intellitype software requiredSET MSINPUT=C:\MSINPUTin AUTOEXEC.BAT; you may just be seeing mangled echo as that command is executed. See this page.