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Can't boot a Windows ME pc


SarahC

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Hi there,

I'm trying to boot a Windwos ME pc but I keep getting this error -

"Windows Protection Error. You need to restart your computer. System Halted."

It was trying to boot from a floppy so i changed this to boot firstly from HDD01, then HDD02 and then HDD03. This allowed me to get abit further with the boot and I selected Safe Mode to start but this seemed to hang on the welcome screen and go no further.

I rebooted, got the above message again so restarted and this time chose Normal Mode but again the above error appeared.

Any ideas are very welcome??

Thanks,

Sarah

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Hi there,

I'm trying to boot a Windwos ME pc but I keep getting this error -

"Windows Protection Error. You need to restart your computer. System Halted."

It was trying to boot from a floppy so i changed this to boot firstly from HDD01, then HDD02 and then HDD03. This allowed me to get abit further with the boot and I selected Safe Mode to start but this seemed to hang on the welcome screen and go no further.

I rebooted, got the above message again so restarted and this time chose Normal Mode but again the above error appeared.

Any ideas are very welcome??

Thanks,

Sarah

Possible causes:

Hardware problem:

The processor is overclocked too much or don't have enough Vcore.

Faulty processor.

Bad caps (capacitors)

Software problems:

The video card driver failed to initialise.

Buggy software.

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reformat with windows 2000. anyone who uses 9X needs their heads looking at

Very useful post, I am sure it will help a lot! :realmad:

@SarahC

You will need to download an ME floppy image from here:

http://www.allbootdisks.com/index.php?opti...der&filecatid=3

and create a bootable floppy.

In the BIOS of the computer you must have boot order floppy/HD/CD or floppy/CD/HD.

If the PC boots, post again, I will try to help you with next steps.

jaclaz

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Reformat with 98se if anything, make sure you use a oringinal copy, burned versions will load but they dont last for some reason. *0r use another drive and load your favorite operating system and copy your goods from the messed-up drive

Edited by kartel
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I had the same problem on a clients computer after racking my pea sized brain for hours I decided that I would try small things to fix it. Well to make a long story short I pulled one of the memory sticks and it booted fine. So I shut it down and pulled the other memory stick and inserted the first pulled stick and ended up with that error again. In the end the memory stick was bad.

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ALOT of the older games will NOT run on windows 2000 however.

Also Windows 2000 Will NOT run on any PC that Windows 98. Windows 98 has much lower system reguirements than windows 2000.

I.E.:

Windows 2000

PC 133

64 megs ram

Windows 98

pc 66

16 megs ram

So at the bottom line windows 98 will run on a pc with nearly a third of the requirements needed for windows 2000...

Edited by kelsenellenelvian
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Hi Jaclaz!

Thanks for your post and to all who have posted! Ok so I downloaded what you said and changed the bios. It worked from the floppy and brought me to four options: 1) Help 2) Start computer with CD-ROM Support 3) Start computer without CD-ROM Support and 4) Minimal Boot.

I presume I need to type commands at the A: prompt in order to boot completely and get into the pc properly??

Sorry but I'm no whiz when it comes to these things!

Thanks,

Sarah

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@all

Here there is a new member asking for help with an unbootable system, probably UNLIKE you, a normal user has FILES, i.e. IMPORTANT DATA on the PC hard disk and re-formatting is NOT an option.

Besides, Operating Systems, EXPECIALLY Microsoft ones, come with a Licence and usually Microsoft likes to be PAYED for them!

So please do refrain from suggesting unrelated opinions on how better is windows 98 or 2000 or whatever and about how clever you were to run a Microsoft Operating System on a below-specs computer, this is simply not the right place for this kind of discussions, you can open a new thread for this.

@SarahC

Yep, what you just succeeded at is booting to the "minimal" DOS prompt, as for the moment you don't need CD-ROM support, select 4) Minimal.

Now what you probably have is a PC with Registry and/or some corrupted system files on the hard disk, but the fact that you booted from floppy should mean that there is no hardware defect.

Check, by issuing a DIR scan*.* command at the prompt, that you have the files:

SCANDISK.INI

SCANDISK.EXE

SCANREG.EXE

on the floppy, if not, sorry, you downloaded the wrong floppy image, and you have to get this one:

http://www.allbootdisks.com/index.php?opti...er&filecatid=40

Now issue the command SCANDISK

http://www.computerhope.com/software/scandisk.htm

to try and fix disk errors

Then issue the command SCANREG /FIX

http://www.computerhope.com/scanregh.htm

to try and fix Registry errors

Now try rebooting without the floppy and see what happens.

If it does not work, re-boot from floppy and this time try issuing the command

SCANREG /RESTORE

http://www.helpwithwindows.com/windows98/start-145.html

(article is about Win98 but ME is similar)

You should be able to select between FIVE backups:

To restore a registry backup from MS-DOS mode

At the C: prompt, type scanreg /restore and press Enter. You do not have to be in the C:\Windows\Command folder to run the command.

Choose which backup to restore. You should have a choice of registry backups from the last five days the system successfully booted. You can also restore other backups from either the hard drive or floppy disk. The backups from the last five days will be in the format RB00x.*, where RB stands for Registry Backup, and x is the sequence number of the backup. RB000.cab is the most recent backup.

Now try rebooting without the floppy and see what happens.

If it does not boot normally, next best option is to re-install Windiws ME over itself.

You will need the original CD that came with the laptop, or depending on models, you might have the files already on the hard disk, possibly in a \support or \cabs sub-directory in the \Windows or \WinME directory, they are a bunch of .cab files.

Post progress results and info about your laptop, if you have the cd, if you found the .cab files......

jaclaz

Edited by jaclaz
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