> > -Ka"Silly Dell tech support"z!
>
> Don't let Dell tech support get you down. I've spent about 40+ hours on the phone with them trying to find the source of a "Windows Protection Error" message I randomly get when starting up my machine (the actual message is "Windows Protection Error: you must restart your computer" in white text on a black screen, before Windows even loads). I'm at the point where I'm about to reformat the drive and reinstall everything that should be on my computer.
>
> -Faux "so, guess what I'm doing for the weekend?" Pas

Before you do that try something. Boot to a DOS prompt and change to the Windows directory. Use the REN command to rename your WIN.INI file to something like WIN.ORG or anything obscure that there wouldn't already be a backup of it with that name. Now reboot your machine and see if it still has the error. Most everytime I've seen that particular error it has been a problem with a driver loading from the WIN.INI file. Windows does not *need* that file as it has the ability to create one on the fly. If it has a bad driver loading then this will let you know and allow you to go line-by-line adding a semi-colon to the beginning of a line to block it and target the bad driver. Just remember to delete the WIN.INI that Windows created and rename the original back before you start the line-by-line examination. Also remember that you'll have to try to restart Windows each time you make a change. My suggestion is to start with entire blocks of the file. For instance don't start with just BLAHBLAH.BLA, instead block out that entire section of the file where it falls and try starting Windows. If it works then you can narrow the search in a line-by-line trial. But be aware of the fact that since you will have drivers blocked from loading, you'll probably get new errors even if Windows boots.

If that is no good then go into the SYSTEM.INI file and make sure that the first section has a line that looks like:

shell=Explorer.exe

If shell= says something other than Explorer.exe, or has nothing there at all then try changing it and see if that works.

If that still doesn't do it you can go line-by-line in the SYSTEM.INI file the same way as the WIN.INI, but you won't be able to rename it like the WIN.INI.

This method takes a while to track down, and may or may not work, but is definately worth a try before you resort to reformatting.

Another option is to rename these two files, look for older backup copies and use them instead. You'd have to reinstall everything that was installed after they were made, but it could be far less hassle in the long run.

Drac "Just don't like to hear of anyone having to reformat" imas