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I'm troubleshooting a friend's laptop because I don't know what he's done but on startup he get's a BSOD saying "Windows protection error. You need to restart the computer. System halted."

What would cause such an error? Would I have to reinstall windows?

can you get into bios and fiddle about with its settings? working with laptop software problems isn't much different from desktop software problems, but if it's the hardware you might be fucked. if all else fails try a reinstall. and if that fails. . .well, you're pretty much screwed.

An update, I can enter windows but only in safe mode. Why can it enter in safe mode but not normal?

What OS? That's the real factor, sounds like corruption somewhere, but there are varying degrees of how screwed you are depending on what version of windows it is.

Enigma wrote:An update, I can enter windows but only in safe mode. Why can it enter in safe mode but not normal?

there's probably a software conflict with something that was installed recently. does it have system restore? if not, find out what was installed lately and uninstall it. or if anything was uninstalled try reinstalling in safe mode.

White Haven wrote:What OS? That's the real factor, sounds like corruption somewhere, but there are varying degrees of how screwed you are depending on what version of windows it is.

WinME.

Darth_Zod wrote:

Enigma wrote:An update, I can enter windows but only in safe mode. Why can it enter in safe mode but not normal?

there's probably a software conflict with something that was installed recently. does it have system restore? if not, find out what was installed lately and uninstall it. or if anything was uninstalled try reinstalling in safe mode.

I think the system restore was disabled.

EDIT: I did a step by step startup and it crashed after loading the windows drivers.

ME. URGH! First step, once you stop vomitting, is to load up Spybot in safe mode and use it to kill out every last startup item. MSCONFIG doesn't do shit, I'm afraid. That'll tell you if it's a startup item problem (If it then boots) or something else (If it doesn't). If something else, it's likely a driver conflict.corruption, which is...harder. Uninstall a few drivers at a time and reboot, see if it'll clear up the problem that way. Sadly, the only good ways to clean up actual OS corruption don't work in WinME, so you may end up looking at a fresh reinstall. If you want to do your friend a BIG favor, give him/her 98SE or 2000 or XP. ANYTHING that isn't 95, 98FE, NT or ME. ME's great til it breaks...but it breaks more than 98, and it's got the same limitations when it comes to repairing it that 98 did.

Okay. If safe mode works that USUALLY means a driver problem. Kill all drivers you can find, go back to OS defaults (go back to VGA graphics, no sound, no fancy HDD drivers etc). IF it still boots after that, begin updating drivers one after the other.
The one that kills the system is either a faulty driver, OR an indication of faulty hardware the driver is supposed to access (in which case you're fucked, unless the warranty still holds).

I clarify a bit on the crash after the step by step. It crashed after loading the .vxd files and here are the names of those files: vnetsup, ndis, javasup, vnetbios, vredir, dfs, ndiswan. What are these files?


UPDATE: System restore didn't help, I restored the laptop to as far back as Oct 30 but the crash still appeared.

UPDATE: loading windows without the vxd files didn't change a thing.

That ain't cool...looks like some basic OS elements are corrupted, those are all stock Microsoft networking drivers. You CAN try installing WinME on top of itself, but I'd recomment backing up data first, just in case, as that can be risky.

White Haven wrote:That ain't cool...looks like some basic OS elements are corrupted, those are all stock Microsoft networking drivers. You CAN try installing WinME on top of itself, but I'd recomment backing up data first, just in case, as that can be risky.

I'm reinstalling WinMe. There's no need to back anything up since there's virtually nothing there to back up.

Problem seems to be fixed. I've reinstalled ME and installed Firefox, Spybot, adaware and HijackThis!. I've removed about 700 data miners\malwares. It's clean for now. Thanks for your help!