Windows Protection Error

[StonedWheat]

My computer crashed when I tried to access my hotmail. I restarted it, and after the splash screen it I saw the screen where it asks for:

1. normal
2. bootloged
3. safe mode
4. step by step confirmation

If I try to start in safe mode, I see a blue screen that says "windows protection error - restart computer.". If I choose any of the other options, the computer resets and goes back to that same option screen. I haven't had too much time to mess around with it since it just happened this morning, but I don't think I even know where to begin. Any suggestions?

[topane]

You might want to try booting to "command prompt only" and running scandisk. It may not help, but scandisk occasionally does fix something. If that doesn't fix it, try running scanreg /restore (if you're on win98) at command prompt and restore a previous registry. Hopefully you'll get lucky with this one. You can try the following article on MS knowledge base http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q188/8/67.ASP
There's a section on doing a step-by-step and trying to get into Windows by saying yes or no to certain steps in the boot process.

Hope this helps

[StonedWheat]

OMG, I can't even boot from a floppy. The drive lights up, then it just proceeds to the same windows ME splash screen. I hope it's not the motherboard!

[StonedWheat]

Oh my bad, the floppy wouldn't boot because I reset the bios and forgot to enable "floppy seek on bootup". I fixed the problem by restoring the old registry. Thanks a lot for your help topane. I used the boot disk to get to the command prompt, and ran win.exe from the windows folder. It automatically detected a corrupt registry. Whew!!!