What causes the Windows Protection Error

[Guest_imported]

When I boot the PC I get the message Windows Protection Error. After that I have to reboot to Safe Mode. When I reboot again, I get the Windows Protection Error message again. What is a Windows Protection Error? And what do I do about it.

 

[alex304]

It could be a corrupted registry or bad win.ini file. The only fix I have found for this is to reinstall the OS over itself. This usually works and will keep you from having to reinstall all other programs.

Alex

 

[swayda]

Hi Gene. Alex304 is probably right, but if you reinstall and the same thing happens, or if you're just curious you can try the following. Boot your machine and when you see "Loading Windows xx" (the xx being the rest of the string) immediately hit F8. This will take you to a menu presenting a list of choices. Choose the one which includes the words "step by step". Please forgive that I can't remeber exactly, it's been years since I ran Windows 4.xx.. This will walk you through the boot process including the loading of 16 bit drivers. Choose one and reply no. Unfortunately you have to do this until you find the offending driver. It won't be any of the standard drivers such as emm386 etc. It would probably be a cd-rom driver or something like that..
You can also just boot into safe mode and open Bootlog.txt. Sometimes that can give you a clue as to what is causing the problem. It will report a failure to load message somewhere. I remember there are a couple which are normal for non-networked machines and I forget which they are. Wish I could be a more help, but it has been a long time. Don Swayser

 

[Prattaratt]

Also, If you just did a re-instal and are running an AMD K6 300+, you need to download a patch for Windows from Microsoft. There is a interaction between the faster AMD's and Windows thw causes that message to come up.