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re: When I try to boot normally, I get an error message "Windows protection error. Restart computer. System halted." Wednesday, September 30, 2009 at 7:26 pm Posted by Steve (23810 messages posted) My bet is the Hard Drive has died. Might be time for a New Computer. If you decide to buy a New Drive, stay at a 120 gigs or smaller. Just a question if the old Computer is worth the trouble. [Reply or follow-up to this message] re: When I try to boot normally, I get an error message "Windows protection error. Restart computer. System halted." Thursday, October 1, 2009 at 4:27 am Posted by Keith Stanier (1655 messages posted) Chrstine Sanchez wrote: |I have tried to use a Systems Suite by Ontrack to boot from, and there were no restore |points available. When I tried to run disk fixer, the program stops and says system |error. Hi Christine. You can do a system restore in DOS but not from the Boot menu as there is no Command Prompt Only on a WinME system as there is on a Win98SE system. You need a bootable floppy, thats if you have a floppy drive? Boot up with the floppy disk inserted if it doesn't read the floppy you will have to go into the CMOS/BIOS and change the boot sequence. Once at the A:\ prompt you can type in Scanreg /restore and Enter and choose a date when it last started up ok. If you get a bad command or filename message then you can either type in Path=C:\windows\command then type in Scanreg /restore. Or you can type in cd C:\windows\command and type Scanreg /restore and Enter If you want to check you drive for errors there should be Scandisk on the boot disk you can do a full scan of your drive which will show up any bad sectors that if may repair. At the A:\ prompt just type in Scandisk and Enter. [Reply or follow-up to this message] re: When I try to boot normally, I get an error message "Windows protection error. Restart computer. System halted." Friday, October 2, 2009 at 4:34 pm Posted by madman420 (15 messages posted) You can get a boot disk from bootdisk.com. If you can't get results with the registry restore, just reinstall Windows ME over itself (be sure to select the "repair" option). You'll need to get the updates from the net again though. To do that, upgrade your IE (Internet Explorer) Web Browser. Then install this util: iuctl.cab ...this will downgrade your Windows Update ActiveX control to work with Win9x - Double-click to open it and right-click on the 'iuctl.inf' file and select'install'. ANSWER "NO" TO ANY POP-UP QUESTIONS (DURING THE IUCTL.INF INSTALL OR WHEN USING WINDOWS UPDATE). Install all "critical" updates and your good to go. [Reply or follow-up to this message] re: When I try to boot normally, I get an error message "Windows protection error. Restart computer. System halted." Tuesday, October 13, 2009 at 1:20 pm Posted by Ed (741 messages posted) There is some confusion here. This discussion has mixed-up two quite separate matters. Christine Sanchez was asking about the Windows ME option "System Restore"; but Keith has provided information about SCANREG.EXE instead (which only restores the Windows Registry). System Restore is a function of Windows ME whereby the computer can (theoretically) be taken back to a specific point in time, i.e. at which it was working normally. By creating a Restore Point (which contains a sort of "snapshot" of the computer's state on that date), if something later crashes the computer you can return the computer to the previous (working) state by using the information in the Restore Point snapshot. System Restore has nothing to do with the Windows registry. It stores its Restore Points (the restore data) in a hidden folder called C:\_RESTORE and (theoretically) this contains not just the registry settings, but actual system files (i.e. configuration files). The problem is, System Restore doesn't work! Microsoft made a complete foul-up of it, and never fixed the faults in it which prevented it working as it was supposed to. All versions of System Restore for WinME are faulty: the program restores, but by using the WRONG dates. You will never fix anything by using System Restore. It just doesn't function properly. Ed On Thursday, October 1, 2009 at 4:27 am, Keith Stanier wrote: >Chrstine Sanchez wrote: >|I have tried to use a Systems Suite by Ontrack to boot from, and there were no restore >|points available. When I tried to run disk fixer, the program stops and says system >|error. > >Hi Christine. > >You can do a system restore in DOS but not from the Boot menu as there is no Command >Prompt Only on a WinME system as there is on a Win98SE system. You need a bootable >floppy, thats if you have a floppy drive? > >Boot up with the floppy disk inserted if it doesn't read the floppy you will have >to go into the CMOS/BIOS and change the boot sequence. Once at the A:\ prompt you >can type in Scanreg /restore and Enter and choose a date when it last started >up ok. > >If you get a bad command or filename message then you can either type in Path=C:\windows\command >then type in Scanreg /restore. Or you can type in cd C:\windows\command and >type Scanreg /restore and Enter > >If you want to check you drive for errors there should be Scandisk on the boot disk >you can do a full scan of your drive which will show up any bad sectors that if may >repair. > >At the A:\ prompt just type in Scandisk and Enter. [Reply or follow-up to this message] Blue Screen Of Death - Possible solutions Tuesday, October 13, 2009 at 1:35 pm Posted by Ed (741 messages posted) You have encountered the Windows fault commonly known as the Blue Screen Of Death. Despite its sinister nickname, it is quite often fixable. Here is a site to look at which provides a lot of practical help for this problem -   Error Messages: Blue Screen Of Death Ed On Wednesday, September 30, 2009 at 7:05 pm, Chrstine Sanchez wrote: >When I try to boot normally, I get the blue screen error message "Windows protection >error. You must restart computer. System halted." Then I tried to boot into safe >mode, and I get a blank screen with the words "safe mode" in all four corners of >the screen. Shortly after, I get a window in the center that says "System Error, >windows cannot read from drive C:. If this is a network drive, make sure the network >is working. If it is a local drive, check the disk." Then there are 3 smaller boxes >below, Cancel, Abort, Retry. > >I have tried to use a Systems Suite by Ontrack to boot from, and there were no restore >points available. When I tried to run disk fixer, the program stops and says system >error. I don't know what else to do. Can anyone help? Thanks. [Reply or follow-up to this message] re: When I try to boot normally, I get an error message "Windows protection error. Restart computer. System halted." Tuesday, October 13, 2009 at 1:47 pm Posted by Ed (741 messages posted) The hard disk can NOT have died. The error message is a Windows message, meaning that Windows has been successfully read from the hard disk, and has at least partially loaded into memory: this would be impossible if the disk could not be accessed (e.g. because it was a dead disk). It would also be impossible for Windows to have loaded if there was physical damage to the hard disk (e.g. to the MBR sector or the Boot Sector), or if there was data corruption affecting either the partition structure or the boot sector. The most likely cause of a Blue Screen error, given the specified error message reported by the user, is the presence of an incompatible device driver file. Ed On Wednesday, September 30, 2009 at 7:26 pm, Steve wrote: >My bet is the Hard Drive has died. Might be time for a New Computer. If you decide >to buy a New Drive, stay at a 120 gigs or smaller. Just a question if the old Computer >is worth the trouble. [Reply or follow-up to this message] re: When I try to boot normally, I get an error message "Windows protection error. Restart computer. System halted." Wednesday, October 14, 2009 at 4:19 am Posted by Don (1 messages posted) Hi Chris, I had same problem as you about 2 months ago. I did what Keith is suggesting here and it worked just fine. Don On Thursday, October 1, 2009 at 4:27 am, Keith Stanier wrote: >Chrstine Sanchez wrote: >|I have tried to use a Systems Suite by Ontrack to boot from, and there were no restore >|points available. When I tried to run disk fixer, the program stops and says system >|error. > >Hi Christine. > >You can do a system restore in DOS but not from the Boot menu as there is no Command >Prompt Only on a WinME system as there is on a Win98SE system. You need a bootable >floppy, thats if you have a floppy drive? > >Boot up with the floppy disk inserted if it doesn't read the floppy you will have >to go into the CMOS/BIOS and change the boot sequence. Once at the A:\ prompt you >can type in Scanreg /restore and Enter and choose a date when it last started >up ok. > >If you get a bad command or filename message then you can either type in Path=C:\windows\command >then type in Scanreg /restore. Or you can type in cd C:\windows\command and >type Scanreg /restore and Enter > >If you want to check you drive for errors there should be Scandisk on the boot disk >you can do a full scan of your drive which will show up any bad sectors that if may >repair. > >At the A:\ prompt just type in Scandisk and Enter. [Reply or follow-up to this message] re: When I try to boot normally, I get an error message "Windows protection error. Restart computer. System halted." Friday, October 16, 2009 at 1:17 pm Posted by Ed (741 messages posted) The first time Windows loads successfully each day, it makes a backup copy of the Windows registry (which is the database holding all the computer's start-up settings). This preserves the (working) registry settings, in case of a later problem. The backup copies are saved in the hidden folder C:\Windows\SysBckUp By default, Windows stores five backup copies of the registry. Therefore you have five backups to choose from, so you can in effect go back up to five days, if something corrupts the registry and Windows can't start. The command Scanreg /restore (which must only be run at the DOS prompt) restores one of these previous copies of the registry. And it allows you to choose which one (of the five) to restore. This solution can only overcome a Blue Screen error (a "STOP" error), if the incompatible device driver file has been accidentally entered in the Registry, e.g. by a software installation which has installed a Windows XP file by mistake. There are some circumstances where that solution won't work, i.e. because the incompatible file is not being loaded by the Windows registry. Files stored in some locations in the C:\WINDOWS folder (i.e. stored in certain subfolders) are automatically loaded, without reference to the registry, and in that situation you will need to consult the page I suggested in this post for possible solutions instead. Ed On Wednesday, October 14, 2009 at 4:19 am, Don wrote: >Hi Chris, >I had same problem as you about 2 months ago. I did what Keith is suggesting here >and it worked just fine. >Don > > > [Reply or follow-up to this message] Tip: Use one of the [Reply or follow-up to this message] links above to add a message to this thread Search this forum Start a new thread on a different subject Report abuse of the forum Return to the Windows Me Discussion Forum