re: Window Protection Error - You need to Restart your Computer System Halted?
Sunday, January 9, 2005 at 1:43 am
Windows Me Annoyances Discussion Forum
Posted by Jack Gulley
(5917 messages posted)
That is what is classified as a "cold start" problem. It is a hardware problem
of some sort, not a software or Windows ME problem. While it is possible it will
go away, it is more likely something that will get worse and fail all together at
some point.
The most common causes of this type of problem are memory (RAM) going bad, "soft"
disk drive errors, disk drive cold start problem and going bad, or a component on
the system board going bad.
The first thing you have to do is make sure you have good backups of any critical
files and documents that are important to you. Either diskette, CD-R or USB memory
stick. Second, some sort of backup for the whole disk drive if possible.
You will also need several diskettes to make boot diskettes with for testing.
First you will need to make a Windows ME startup diskette if you do not have one.
In Control Panel, Add/Remove Programs icon, Startup Disk tab, make a startup diskette.
The second diskette you need is a standalone memory test diskette. Go to MemTest86_v3.2 and download their
program (the "Download - Pre-Compiled Memtest86 v3.2 installable from Windows and
DOS" link) and run their "install" procedure to make a bootable memory test diskette.
This special format diskette will boot the system directly into a long (never ending)
memory test. Verify that both are usable and that the first one gets you to a WinDOS
A:\ prompt, and the second starts running the memory test. You will have to reboot
or power off the system to stop it.
Next you need to try to determine what the source of the problem is and can it
be fixed. As the system can be started and after a few tries becomes usable, the
most logical place to start is to check the disk drive for problems. Get it started
and after about 15 minutes (long enough to warm up good). Go to System Tools and
run the ScanDisk program. Select Normal mode first and Un-Check the
option for Automatically correcting errors. You want to see what errors occur and
write them down. Then run it and see what errors if any are detected, and let it
correct the errors. If you get errors and don't understand them, post back with what
they are (may take time to respond, this may take days to get an idea of what might
be wrong). If you get too many errors, exit the program and start over with it but
let it Automatically fix errors in the Normal mode test. (This is just a quick test
of the file system to look for and correct problems caused by the system being shutdown
incorrectly.)
Next, run ScanDisk in Thorough mode. This can take several hours, and you may
want to run it over night. You will want to reboot the system into Safe Mode first,
so that it will not keep restarting. But let it run and test the whole disk drive.
If you can, run it again a second time. The objective is to see if it can find any
"weak" area's on the disk drive that might be causing problems and bad reads and
that can be corrected. If you suspect it is a disk drive problem, you might want
to run a manufactures Quality test on it. (See: Disk tests links, depending on the type of drive you have.)
Now you want to also run the DOS version of ScanDisk on the C: drive. To do this,
reboot the system with the Windows ME Startup diskette, and at the A:\ prompt, enter
SCANDISK C: and then let it run through the disk drive again. This version
will give you a visual representation of the disk drive and its progress. If you
see any area's marked B for "Bad", you know you have a disk drive problem
and it might need replacing, or at least reformatted and tested before reloading
Windows on it.
Second test that needs to be done, is to boot with and run the extended memory
test. It could take an hour or more to run at least two full passes through the tests.
If any errors are reported, you have bad memory that needs to be replaced.
Once you have ran it and know it is working, set the system up to run it overnight
and let it run for at least eight hours or more to do a good test of the memory and
basic hardware.
Up to now, all of the testing has been done with the system hot. The next step
is to use the boot diskettes to test the system when it is cold. Allow the system
to set and cool several hours. Over night is best. Insert the boot diskette for
the memory test again, and power it up so it boots into the memory test directly.
See if it detects a memory error during the first two passes. You may want to try
this test several times (like I said, this could take days).
Next do the same type of cold boot test with the Windows ME startup diskette and
then start the SCANDISK C: test and allow it to run and see if it detects errors
when the disk drive is cold. Repeat if necessary.
If you get errors that refer to the "boot sector", you may want to correct it
by booting with the Windows ME startup diskette and running the command FDISK
/mbr once. And then seeing if the system boots and the boot sector error goes
away.
After all of this testing, you should be able to determine what type of problem
is causing the failure (memory or disk drive) and if ScanDisk was able to fix the
problem. If it looks like a problem that still shows up when the disk drive is cold,
it still could be a system board problem. That would then take some more work, and
the only way to do that would be to test with a different or new disk drive. But
first you need to get an idea of what is causing the problem before deciding what
to do next.
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