Ok, here is my dilemma--my Gateway computer crashed a while back, took it to the shop....He installed ZoneAlarm on an already very slow system.  I hated it.....Anyway last night I decided to get rid of it and disabled it.  When I did that I also was clearing some shortcuts from my desktop (lots of different spyware PROGRAMS).  Anyway, I shut down the computers and started it back up, now Window 98 is gone.  I have my disk and access to product key if I can get to screen with start button.  As of now it goes directly into Win setup mode.  How do I get to my start button....help!!!!Can you get into Safe Mode?  It's starting to sound like you have to do a Windows re-install.I am not sure about safe mode and I am not home infrom of my computer.  Seems like the first thing I see on my screen is some basic computer info in upper left hand corner, then it asks if I wants to reboot using cd-rom or hard drive(I think), I put my disk in and set up begins, I get to the part of product key and I dont have it.  I have found a way to get it but I NEED to be able to get to the start, run redegit....( i'm sure you know what I am talking about there).  Man, I am at a loss of what to do.....thank you for any help you can give me....Oh! Sweet panic!
If you didn't mess with any of the windows files, it should continue to boot normally after you get the "Boot from CD", Boot from Hard Disk" message. Normally, when this is displayed, there will be about a 10 second delay and the boot PROCESS will continue if you do nothing. Or you can use the up/down arrows to highlight the hard disk and press enter. The message is displayed because CD-ROM is selected as the first boot device in the BIOS setup.I dont think I touched any Win files.  My only problem is being about to get to where my product key is in the system.  Without it I cant do anything, just setup to that POINT....man, my husband is going to be MAD!  Thaks you guys for these answers, I'm going to try everything.